The Mother Sauces of French Cuisine
In the early nineteenth century, in his book L’Art de la Cuisine Française, Chef Marie-Antoine Carême named allemande, béchamel, velouté, and espagnole as the four foundational sauces of French cooking. Chef Auguste Escoffier expanded and refined Carême’s sauce work in his 1903 Le Guide Culinaire. Escoffier made allemande a daughter sauce of velouté and added “sauce tomate” and hollandaise to a list commonly known as French cuisine’s mother sauces. Hundreds of sauces are built on the backs of these basics.
