MOTHER SAUCES

They are the five classic sauces every chef learns to make but how and why did they become the matriarchs of French cuisine?

- JORDAN KRETCHMER

When French chef Auguste Escoffier devised A Guide To Modern Cookery in 1903 (still in print and referenced widely in cookery), he catalogued the mother sauces, originally established by Marie Antoine Carême in the late 18th century. The selection of cooked and warmed sauces form the cornerstone of what chefs learn when they first begin culinary school, and set the foundations for a universe of saucy deviations, or what Escoffier pegs as secondary, daughter or small sauces. He also prescribes what a good sauce should be: smooth, light (without being watery nor too viscous), glossy to the eye, and decided in taste. The modern evolution of these sauces means some of the mother sauces such as tomato and espagnole - are not commonly used in kitchens anymore, making way for the 'small' sauces to be firmly embedded in modern French cuisine. Here, we speak to chefs Guillaume Brahimi and Elsa Marie about the five mother sauces, and explore a glossary of other beloved French classics.

BÉCHAMEL