SAUCES

RECONSIDERED
 Rowman & Littlefield Studies in Food and Gastronomy
General Editor: Ken Albala, Professor of History,
University of the Pacific (kalbala@pacific.edu)

Rowman & Littlefield Executive Editor:

Suzanne Staszak-Silva (sstaszak-silva@rowman.com)

Food studies is a vibrant and thriving field encompassing not only cooking
and eating habits but also issues such as health, sustainability, food safety,
and animal rights. Scholars in disciplines as diverse as history, anthropol-
ogy, sociology, literature, and the arts focus on food. The mission of Row-
man & Littlefield Studies in Food and Gastronomy is to publish the best
in food scholarship, harnessing the energy, ideas, and creativity of a wide
array of food writers today. This broad line of food-related titles will range
from food history, interdisciplinary food studies monographs, general inter-
est series, and popular trade titles to textbooks for students and budding
chefs, scholarly cookbooks, and reference works.

Appetites and Aspirations in Vietnam: Food and Drink in the Long Nine-
teenth Century, by Erica J. Peters
Three World Cuisines: Italian, Mexican, Chinese, by Ken Albala
Food and Social Media: You Are What You Tweet, by Signe Rousseau
Food and the Novel in Nineteenth-Century America, by Mark McWilliams
Man Bites Dog: Hot Dog Culture in America, by Bruce Kraig and Patty Carroll
A Year in Food and Beer: Recipes and Beer Pairings for Every Season, by
Emily Baime and Darin Michaels
Celebraciones Mexicanas: History, Traditions, and Recipes, by Andrea Law-
son Gray and Adriana Almazán Lahl
The Food Section: Newspaper Women and the Culinary Community, by
Kimberly Wilmot Voss
Small Batch: Pickles, Cheese, Chocolate, Spirits, and the Return of Artisanal
Foods, by Suzanne Cope
Food History Almanac: Over 1,300 Years of World Culinary History, Cul-
ture, and Social Influence, by Janet Clarkson
Cooking and Eating in Renaissance Italy: From Kitchen to Table, by Kath-
erine A. McIver
Eating Together: Food, Space, and Identity in Malaysia and Singapore, by
Jean Duruz and Gaik Cheng Khoo
Nazi Hunger Politics: A History of Food in the Third Reich, by Gesine Gerhard
The Carrot Purple and Other Curious Stories of the Food We Eat, by Joel S.
Denker
Food in the Gilded Age: What Ordinary Americans Ate, by Robert Dirks
Urban Foodways and Communication: Ethnographic Studies in Intangible
Cultural Food Heritages Around the World, by Casey Man Kong Lum and
Marc de Ferrière le Vayer
Food, Health, and Culture in Latino Los Angeles, by Sarah Portnoy
Food Cults: How Fads, Dogma, and Doctrine Influence Diet, by Kima Cargill
Prison Food in America, by Erika Camplin
K’Oben: 3,000 Years of the Maya Hearth, by Amber M. O’Connor and
Eugene N. Anderson
As Long As We Both Shall Eat: A History of Wedding Food and Feasts,
by Claire Stewart
American Home Cooking: A Popular History, by Tim Miller
A Taste of Broadway: Food in Musical Theater, by Jennifer Packard
Pigs, Pork, and Heartland Hogs: From Wild Boar to Baconfest, by Cynthia
Clampitt
Sauces Reconsidered: Après Escoffier, by Gary Allen
 SAUCES
RECONSIDERED
Après Escoffier

Gary Allen

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
Published by Rowman & Littlefield
An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
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Copyright © 2019 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

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Names: Allen, Gary (Gary J.), author.
Title: Sauces reconsidered : après Escoffier / Gary Allen.
Description: Lanham, Maryland : the Rowman & Littlefield, [2019] | Series:
Rowman & Littlefield studies in food and gastronomy | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018029461 (print) | LCCN 2018032723 (ebook) | ISBN
9781538115145 (electronic) | ISBN 9781538115138 (cloth : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Sauces. | Sauces—History. | Escoffier, A. (Auguste),
1846–1935. | LCGFT: Cookbooks.
Classification: LCC TX819.A1 (ebook) | LCC TX819.A1 A37 2019 (print) | DDC
641.81/4—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018029461
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Printed in the United States of America

For my wife, Karen Philipp,
who is saucy in a good way.
 CONTENTS

ACKNO WL EDGMENTS xi
I NTRO DUCTION 1
A FE W W O R DS ABOUT SALT 3

PAR T I :  ANCIENS REGIM ES

1  S O MA NY RIC H SA U C ES 7
2  O LD WINE IN NEW BOTTLES 1 5
3  NI NETEENTH CENTU RY 2 5
4 
T H E F RENCH WERE NOT, O F C OU RS E,
4 
T H E ONL Y SA UC IERS 3 9
5  THE MODERN WORLD OF COOKING BEGINS 5 1

PA RT I I :  O BRAV E N EW WORLD, T HA T H A S
S UCH S A UCES IN IT!
6  T I ME F OR A C HA NGE 6 1
7  SO LUTIONS 6 5
8  SUSPENSIONS 8 5
9  G E LS 1 1 5

ix
 C ontents

10  E MULSIONS 1 2 7
11  CULT URED SA U C ES 1 3 9
12  CO MPOSITES 1 4 7

A F TE RWO RD 1 6 9
N OTES 1 7 1
R EFERENCE S 1 8 3
I NDE X 1 8 9

x
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I t would be unthinkable not to thank Harold McGee for doing so much

to make the science of the kitchen accessible to cooks. More than anyone
else, he stripped away the untested assumptions and accepted “facts” about
what we do when we cook—and replaced them with methods that actually
work (and explained why they work).
Nor can I omit my friend Robert DelGrosso, since this book grew directly
from conversations we shared when we both worked at the Hyde Park cam-
pus of The Culinary Institute of America (The CIA). Bob is one of those
rare individuals who combines scientific outlook and artistic ability with a
broad knowledge of the humanities—and manages to bring all that experi-
ence into the kitchen.
Speaking of The CIA, the Conrad N. Hilton Library and its wonderful
staff have been generous (and patient) with their time and knowledge. I’ve
availed myself of their largesse many times, for most of my books and several
of my articles, and I’m immensely appreciative.
Ken Albala—my editor, collaborator, and friend—had faith in this proj-
ect when it was little more than an idea. He and the rest of the production
staff at Rowman & Littlefield, especially Suzanne Staszak-Silva and Patricia
Stevenson, have literally made this book what it is. That said, it is only fair
to admit that any errors, egregious blunders, and unforgivable oversights
encountered herein are entirely my own contributions.

xi
 INTRODUCTION

W hat is a sauce? Everyone knows the answer, right? It’s that fluid sub-
stance we pour over our food to make it taste better.
Naturally, the real answer is a bit more complicated (or this book could
be reduced to just those last fourteen words) and poses some interesting
questions. For example, some of those “fluid substances” are by-products of
the cooking process that serve to reinforce the flavor of the main ingredient
(jus and pan gravy are familiar examples), while others are made separately
and provide a culinary counterpoint to the primary ingredient. The latter in-
clude, among others, the “marinara” that coats a pizza, the hollandaise atop
eggs Benedict, and a vast array of condiments, either freshly prepared or
commercially made—from mustard, ketchup, and mayonnaise to Worces-
tershire and sriracha.
Then there is the question of viscosity. How much viscosity is too much?
When does a sauce cease to be a sauce and become better described as a
paste? And what if an ingredient, like Chinese sesame paste—which is more
solid than Middle Eastern tahini—is thinned with other, more liquid ingre-
dients to make something that is clearly sauce-like? Does that make it a kind
of proto sauce?
Still more issues add complexity to the discussion: How does the in-
tended usage of one of these flavorful liquids affect its position in a hierarchy
of sauces? Where do we even place the sauce relative to other foodstuffs?
Do we pool it under, pour it over, mix it thoroughly throughout, serve it
on the side (in condiment bottles or little bowls of dipping liquid), or even

1
 I ntroduction

encapsulate it inside (like the agar-covered pearls of molecular gastronomy

or Shanghai-style soup dumplings)?
So, we’ve already begun to probe the variables that delineate possible cat-
egories for sauces—the rude beginnings of a kind of taxonomy. Many of our
decisions will place individual sauces somewhere on a continuous spectrum
of sauces, rarely all one form or another. Attempting to force an ingredient
into one of two categories (sauce or nonsauce) is almost as useless as separat-
ing the entire animal kingdom into male and female. While that does provide
one kind of distinction, it tells us very little about individual species and how
they relate to one another. Nature, including the nature of sauces, is not so
easily crammed into one cubbyhole or another.
Needless to say, we are not the first to have tried to make sense of the
world of sauces—some have had more success than others. There is noth-
ing completely new under the sun. This book attempts to build on previ-
ous efforts and, possibly, to create a more universal taxonomy of sauces.
If, like Isaac Newton, we are to see farther by standing on the shoulders of
giants—a notion he borrowed from a series of giants that goes all the way
back to the Roman poet Lucan—then we must begin with the sauces and
the sauce classifications of the past. It remains to be seen whether—after
visiting Westminster Abbey and literally standing on the shoulders (and
the rest of what remains) of Isaac Newton—our view has been much en-
hanced by the experience.
Note: When possible, historical recipes have been formatted as modern
recipes. However, some could not be so arranged without fundamentally
altering their “flavor.” Their quaint style is a part of that “flavor” that we
discard at our peril. Likewise, the unusual spellings in these recipes have
been left as found and uncorrected. Think of them as spicy ingredients that
have somehow gone out of fashion after decades or centuries of neglect.

2
 A FEW WORDS
ABOUT SALT

I t’s almost impossible to discuss sauces without mentioning sodium

chloride (NaCl). Salt is so important that the very words “sauce” and
“salsa” (not to mention “sausage,” “salary,” and “salubrious”) are derived,
ultimately, from the Latin sal, meaning “salt.” It is so basic that The Deip-
nosophistae of Athenaeus quotes the Cynic Antiphanes as saying, “Of the
relishes which come from the sea we always have one, and that day in, day
out. I mean salt.”1
It’s not a coincidence that Matthew 5:13–16 has Jesus saying, “Ye are
the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be
salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trod-
den under foot of men.” We are nothing if we’re not “worth our salt”—and
neither are our sauces.
This is not just a Western concept. According to Zhou Hongcheng, the an-
cient Chinese had a saying: “Oh salt, he is a General in the Chinese cuisine.”

This saying, used earlier but recorded by Ban Gu during the Eastern Han
Dynasty (25–220 ce), shows the importance of salt in all sauces.
Salt crystals bring cultural meanings and give people food choices in sauce
manufacture. Salt supplements enhance each sauce, and Chinese food prepa-
ration reflects people’s affection for sauce and salt in their lives. In China,
people do not get their salt from a salt shaker. They get theirs using many
different sauces as they prepare their dishes. Thus, in China, salt and sauce
are great partners.2

3
 A F ew W ords about   S alt

Salt is essential to life for all of us (animals travel miles just for a chance
to lick soil containing even a trace of salt). However, for anyone afflicted by
hypertension, too much salt can be dangerous. Fortunately, excess salt is
eliminated by the kidneys of healthy people, so—for them, at least—warnings
about NaCl’s dangers should be taken with a grain of you-know-what.

Salt, as served by folks who care more about taste than medi-
cal proscriptions. Source: Gary Allen

4
 I

ANCIENS REGIMES
 1

SO MANY RICH SAUCES

M any food histories open their discussion of early sauces by referring,

like Isaac Newton’s famous quote, to the Romans. This seems reason-
able because much of what we’ve learned about the history of cooking has
been gleaned from cookbooks—and the earliest known cookbook is De re
coquinaria. It was attributed to Apicius and compiled in the fourth century
ce, but it was not actually written by that famous first-century gourmet. It
was assembled from various sources and merely named for Apicius. Think
of it as old-school (very old-school) celebrity marketing.
It’s always difficult to determine when a recipe was first created. Recipes
don’t usually appear in written form until well after they’ve proven suc-
cessful enough for people to want to save them for others to prepare. Also,
“new” recipes are often variations on older recipes, so who’s to say when
they were really created? We can safely assume that the recipes in De re
coquinaria were already “classic” by the time someone decided to collect
them together in book form.
About a century before De re coquinaria was compiled, Athenaeus wrote
The Deipnosophistae, a detailed account of luxurious dining in the period.
It was not a cookbook, but he described many dishes—and mentioned the
sauces that accompanied them. Athenaeus collected his “recipes” from a
number of books—many from ancient Greece—that have not survived to our
time, so his accounts provide a way to peer a little further back in time than
would otherwise be possible.

7
 CHAPTER 1

His book describes a simple sauce from The Slave-Teacher (by Phere-
crates, a comic playwright, who lived about the same time as Aristophanes).
Pherecrates wrote some eighteen plays, but the few fragments that survive
do so largely because of Athenaeus.

Tell us how the dinner is progressing. Well then, you are to have a piece of
eel, a squid, some lamb, a slice of sausage, a boiled foot, a liver, a rib, a vast
number of birds, cheese with honey sauce, and a portion of beef.1

Sauce-related fragments of several plays by Sopater of Paphos appear in

The Deipnosophistae.2 For example, in his Hippolytus, he wrote, “How the
fecund miscarried matrix rounds out cheese-like in the stew, covered with
white sauce!”3 A “matrix” was the uterus of a pig (apparently a “nose-to-tail”
delicacy in the ancient world). His Physiologus mentions “a well boil’d slice
of paunch of pig holding within a sharp and biting gravy.” “Pig’s paunch”
is what we call pork belly, or uncured bacon. The Greeks, like us, cut the
fattiness of such rich meats with tangy sauces. In the Silphæ, Sopater says,
“You may eat a slice of boil’d pig’s paunch, Dipping it in a bitter sauce of
rue.”4 In Amphictyons, Telecleides dreamed that

Fish too came straight unto men’s doors,

And fried themselves all ready,
Dished themselves up, and stood before
The guests upon the tables.
A stream of soup did flow along
In front of all the couches,
Rolling down lumps of smoking meat;
And rivulets of white sauce
. . . There too were cutlets of broiled fish well seasoned
With sauce of every kind, and cook, and country.
. . . And streams of sauce which flow
Straight down from Plutus’ own springs,
For all the guests to relish.5

This sounds like the medieval pays de cocaigne or the hobo utopian song
“Big Rock Candy Mountain” by Haywire Mac (Harry McClintock).

8
 S o M any R ich S auces

We often hear of the Roman fish sauces garum and liquamen (we’ll
discuss them at greater length further along), and it is clear from reading
Athenaeus that such fermented sauces were common in Greek cooking.

Amphis notes that the oil produced in Thurii is particularly good: the oil in
Thurii, lentil soup in Gela. Fermented fish-sauce.
Cratinus: Your basket will be full of fish-sauce.
Pherecrates: He got his beard dirty with the fish-sauce.
Sophocles in Triptolemus: . . . of sauce made of preserved fish.
Plato: They’re going to choke me to death by dipping me in rotten fish-sauce.6

However, the use of fish sauces is even older, perhaps a thousand years
older. Reading through Babylonian cuneiform tablets,7 we encounter many
references to siqqu, which is the Mesopotamian equivalent of garum. Siqqu
was fermented protein (from fish, shellfish, or even grasshoppers) in con-
centrated brine.
Most of the surviving recipes from Mesopotamia are for meats cooked
in complex, highly seasoned broths. These rich broths (usually described,
lovingly, as “fatty”) were sometimes served with the boiled meats or
separately, like a soup. Blood or crumbs of bappiru (bread that was both
a by-product and an ingredient of the beer-making process) thickened
the broth, a technique that survived into the Middle Ages and beyond.
Indeed, pearà (a rich sauce made from a complicated stock and bread-
crumbs cooked in beef marrow and heavily seasoned with black pepper)
is still the cornerstone of Veronese bollito misto. The recipe is rumored to
date to the ninth century, which corresponds with the beginnings of the
Venetian spice trade, so all that expensive pepper was appropriately—and
conspicuously—extravagant.
Here is a typical Mesopotamian recipe (note the absence of many of the
details—method, amounts, temperature, and timing—we expect in a recipe):

Historic Recipe: Dodder Broth

Not fresh meat but rather “salted” meat is used. Prepare water; add fat; . . .
some crushed dodder; onion, samidu, coriander; cumin; leek and garlic. . . .
With the pot resting on the heat, the broth is ready to serve.8

9
 CHAPTER 1

“Dodder” is Jean Bottéro’s translation of kasû. He suspected that it might

have been an invasive weed of the Cuscuta genus.9 Laura Kelley says it’s
much more likely to be “wild licorice (Glycyrrhiza glabra), and . . . was used
by the Mesopotamians both in cooking and in making beer,”10 which sounds
much tastier.
Bottéro didn’t know what samidu was either, but he thought that its
context in other recipes suggested that it was a precious spice of some kind.
Kelley notes, “Looking to modern languages, however, I found that in He-
brew and Syrian, semida means ‘fine meal’ and, in Greek, semidalis is used
to denote ‘the finest flour.’ According to the University of Chicago’s Assyr-
ian Dictionary, semidu is also defined as semolina.”11
The use of flour or breadcrumbs as a sauce thickener is obviously an-
cient, but it is certainly not obsolete. British bread sauce is a survivor from
medieval kitchens (stew stale breadcrumbs in milk with butter and onions,
and then season with a mixture of spices that would seem familiar to any
thirteenth-century cook: bay leaves, cloves, mace, and pepper). In the same
fashion, the rouille of Provence is a paste made by pounding breadcrumbs,
chiles, garlic, and saffron in olive oil. It’s added to each diner’s portion of
bouillabaisse to taste.
When we read the satirists (such as Petronius and Juvenal), we encoun-
ter an exaggerated version of what the Romans ate, but their accounts
had to be close enough to reality to be immediately recognizable to their
audiences. For example, when—during the famous feast of Trimalchio (in
The Satyricon)—the fish course arrives, we’re told, “At the corners of the
tray stood four little gravy boats, all shaped like the satyr Marsyas, with
phalluses from spouts and a spicy hot gravy dripping down over several
large fish swimming about in the lagoon of the tray.”12 The excess might
be laughable, but the fact that sauces were served was expected. “Gravy”
is an unfortunate choice of words in the translation, since we have a strong
culturally identified notion of “gravy” that would not have made sense to a
diner in ancient Rome. Trimalchio’s “spicy hot gravy” is nothing like our
gravy (meat juices thickened with flour); rather, it is garum piperatum—a
heavily peppered Roman fish sauce.
In his fourteenth satire, Juvenal lampoons the Roman taste for crude
excess, such as when a sauce overwhelms a delicacy:

10
 S o M any R ich S auces

Who, with a gourmand sire, a hoary old glutton as teacher,

Knows all about peeling truffles, all about seasoning mushrooms,
All about drowning in gravy the delicate beccaficoes.13

“Beccaficoes” are our ortolans—tiny endangered birds that cause wealthy

gourmets to become culinary outlaws. Even today, we laugh at the culinary
excess of gourmets sitting at table with napkins over their heads to prevent
the escape of any trace of ortolan vapor (or, perhaps, to hide the shame of
indulging in their illicit gastronomic bliss).
While the satirists provide small glimpses of Roman sauce consumption,
De re coquinaria gives us a better idea of its extent. The text is divided into
books, each devoted to a single category: “Mise en Place,” “Meat Dishes,”
“Greens,” “Compound Dishes,” “Pulses,” “Fowl,” “Luxury Dishes,”
“Quadrupeds,” “Seafood,” and “Fish.”
One book in De re coquinaria, “Epimeles” (meaning essentially mise en
place, a French term that refers to the sorts of things a cook would do in
advance, preparations any kitchen would keep on hand), lists only a few
basic sauces:

A couple of cumin sauces (one specifically for oysters and shellfish),

containing pepper, lovage, dried mint, malabathrum (foliage of the
cinnamon plant), plenty of cumin, honey, vinegar, and liquamen
Two laser sauces (laser was a synonym for silphium, an odoriferous asa-
foedita-like resin) flavored with honey, vinegar, and liquamen, as well
as various combinations of herbs (parsley, mint, spikenard, lovage,
dill, rue) and the usual malabathrum and silphium
Mortaria, pesto-like pounded fresh herbs (mint, rue, cilantro, and fen-
nel), plus honey, liquamen, lovage, and pepper, made sweet and sour
with vinegar
A pair of sauces based on oenogarum (mixtures of wine and liquamen),
with coriander, honey, lovage, pepper, rue, and oil, or with honey,
lovage, pepper, savory, thyme, and oil
Oxygarum, an aid to digestion made with cardamom, cumin, mint, and
pepper, sweetened with honey and thinned with liquamen and vinegar
Oxyporium, a honey-based sauce consisting of cumin, ginger, dates, pep-
per, and rue

11
 CHAPTER 1

With the fall of Rome, cookbooks as sources of information about sauces

pretty much disappeared. I’m sure that sauces were still served in the so-
called Dark Ages, but we really started hearing about them only after me-
dieval kitchens started showing the influence of Crusaders’ experiences of
the spice-based cookery of the Holy Lands (and even more so after the late
fifteenth century, when printing made the wide-scale publishing of cook-
books possible).
While European kitchens left few traces during those dark years, Islam
was highly literate and not only had the kind of rich court life that encour-
aged the development of haute cuisine but also documented it in writing.
Like the Romans and the Mesopotamians before them, Islamic cooks re-
lied heavily on salty fermented sauces to add umami (the so-called fifth taste,
roughly like our savory) to their dishes. Their equivalent of garum and siqqu
was called murri,14 and it came in two different versions: the familiar fish
sauce and a paste-like ingredient made from fermented barley bread. Both
were dark and savory—very much like Chinese soy sauce in character and
function. Another sauce was made from spiced grape juice, a thick syrup
reduced to the consistency of molasses.
Unlike the Romans, Islamic cooks had access to sugar, with which they
prepared countless syrups that they used either directly or in combination
with fruits, spices, and murri. Their religion forbade the use of wine, of
course, but they were allowed nabîdh raihâni (a weak basil-scented brew).
Islamic cooks thickened their sauces with ground almonds and walnuts in
addition to dried fruits (such as raisins and dates).
While Roman cooks liked to incorporate bitter tastes, like rue, Islamic
cooks relied on sweet spices: cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and nutmeg. They
were early masters of maceration and distillation, so many of their dishes
were perfumed with rose water, orange-blossom water, and infusions of
violets and lavender.
Arabic flavors and techniques came to dominate European court cook-
ery well into the Renaissance. Only with The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi
(1570) do we see the beginning of the end of medieval sauce cookery in
Italy. Ginger and cinnamon were less used, but sauces based on fruits
(apples, cherries, gooseberries, mulberries, pomegranates, prunes, quince,
raisins, and red currants), nuts (almonds and walnuts), and various forms
of agrodolce (bittersweet, based on citrus—such as bitter orange—and/or

12
 S o M any R ich S auces

verjuice, combined with honey or sugar) still reflect the Arabic influence on
European cooking. Scappi was also fond of using rose water in his recipes,
another nod to Islamic traditions. He was not only looking to the past; he
also had a recipe that foreshadowed today’s pesto (it incorporated several
herbs [arugula, burnet, mint, parsley, sorrel, and spinach] and nuts [al-
monds or filberts] but no oil, garlic, or cheese).
As European cookery started moving away from Middle Eastern flavors,
their influence survived, long afterward, in an unlikely place. Spanish cooks
held on to these traditions longer than their neighbors and, through colo-
nization, influenced the cooking of Mexico. Classic mole poblano, with its
complex sauce of spices, thickened with almonds and raisins, could easily be
mistaken for an Arabic dish. Before the New World was discovered, Islamic
cooks wouldn’t have had chocolate and chiles (so they never created mole
poblano) or pumpkin seeds; otherwise, they probably would have invented
sauces that resembled Mexican pipians.
While attempts to classify sauces really began in earnest in France, the
ancient Chinese also tried to categorize sauce cookery.

The first and earliest are meat sauces. This sauce group include[s] those
from four-legged animals and those made from poultry including chicken
and goose. There are also meat sauces made from wild beasts and from small
animals such as rabbits. Another group of sauces include those from plant
sources. A third group [is] made with different fish. Meat sauces are the most
ancient.
As early as during the Zhou dynasty (1045–256 bce), there is a record of
an old meat sauce recipe. It appears in the Li Ji, a classical Chinese book
compiled during the time of the Western Han dynasty (206–25 bce). It tells
about earlier times when it was used. In the Li Ji there are two kinds of meat
sauces. One is made without bones and called hai. The other is made with
bones and called ni.15

The difference between those last meat sauces curiously mirrors our distinc-
tion between stock (made from bones) and broth (made from meat).
The sauce cookery of other Asian cultures—much of which has de-
veloped from contact with Chinese techniques—is heavily dependent on
preserved ingredients. Dried, salted, and fermented foods practically define
these cuisines.

13
 CHAPTER 1

In ancient China, most people were poor and had a hard life. They cherished
and treasured food, and they learned how to preserve it. Their efforts led to
advanced preservation techniques, and in the process, they learned to make
many fermented sauces using different materials.
The sauce made from soybeans—namely, soy sauce—is not as old as meat
sauces, but today it is the king of all fermented seasonings. Many sauces change
the flavor and appearance of foods, as do soy sauces. Different ones make for a
large variety of different food tastes including all sauces from soybeans.
Fish sauces also played and still play important roles in people’s lives in
China. This is especially true for those who lived in the Yangzi and Yellow
River regions. While Chinese fish sauces are also ancient, they are newer than
meat sauces, and they have their own unique features. They are generally
referred to as yu hai. Some fish sauces are recorded in the Zhou Li, but these
were not as popular.16

Asian fish sauces are similar to, but not exactly the same as, Roman
liquamen—but, like soy sauce, they serve the same culinary functions:
providing salt and umami.

A popular brand of fish sauce—which is not, as one might reasonably expect, made
from squid. Source: Gary Allen

14
 2

OLD WINE IN
NEW BOTTLES

B efore the 1960s—when Julia Child’s TV show introduced many Amer-

icans to real French food—many people thought that French food was
anything covered with too much sauce. This is ironic, since Americans
slathered sauces on most of their meals—meals that they believed to be
red-blooded American, through and through. They never imagined that
ketchup, mustard, gravy, barbecue sauce, A.1., salad dressing, Tabasco,
mayonnaise, and Worcestershire sauce had anything in common with
fussy, overdressed French cuisine.
What so many didn’t realize was that French culinary traditions governed
a great many of our eating habits. The structure of our meals, the organiza-
tion of restaurant kitchens and their staffs, and even our most ordinary dishes
(often accompanied by flour-thickened gravies) have all been influenced by

Nineteenth-century ad for Worcestershire sauce. Source: Public domain

15
 CHAPTER 2

our French forebears. If we are to understand our use of, and relation to, the
world’s vast pantry of sauces, we really need to begin in France.
There is a popular notion that French cuisine did not begin to flower
until Catherine de Medici brought the cooking of the Italian Renais-
sance with her in 1533. This fallacy becomes apparent if we glance at Le
viandier de Taillevent. This fourteenth-century cookbook—like the one
attributed to Apicius—is associated with someone who may, or may not,
have been involved in its production. For this book, Guillaume Tirel (aka
Taillevent), like Apicius, largely collected preexisting recipes. Unlike
Apicius (who had been dead for centuries before his book was assembled),
Tirel may have added later parts to a book that first appeared a decade or
so before he was born. Plagiarism was not considered a fault back then
(and copyright had yet to be invented); it was actually prized as a measure
of an author’s erudition.
Many of Tirel’s sauces were based on the drippings, juices, and liquids
in which the main ingredients cooked. The technique used was much like
that of the sauces from ancient Mesopotamia. Tirel contributed a degree of
refinement to the evolution of sauces. While his sauces were still thickened
with bits of stale bread (or eggs or puréed vegetables), forcing the liquid
and lumps through a drum-shaped, muslin-lined strainer (a tamis) yielded a
smoother, more luxurious sauce than was previously possible.
No attempt was made to impose logical order on the collection of reci-
pes, other than grouping them in the cookbook—as in Apicius—by usage
or by variations of seasoning employed. The only category for sauces that
appears in Tirel’s table of contents is a group of six unboiled sauces. One,
for cameline sauce, was thickened with bread and had the typical spice-
heavy flavors of the Middle Ages. It incorporated cinnamon, cloves, ginger,
grains of paradise, mace, and long pepper, brightened with a bit of vinegar.
He added a second version perfumed with garlic. Here are a couple more
examples of Tirel’s sauces (note that the first one uses nuts as a thickener, in
Arabic/medieval fashion, but both are—in more modern fashion—strained
free of any lumpiness).

Historic Recipe: 85. Yellow Sauce

A Yellow Sauce for cold fish fried in oil without flour. Grind almonds, steep
in wine (mostly) and verjuice, sieve, and boil. Grind ginger, cloves, grains

16
 O ld W ine in N ew B ottles

of paradise and a bit of saffron, and steep in your broth. Boil well with some
sugar. It should be very thick.1

Historic Recipe: 218. Must Sauce

Take some grapes from the bunch, peel them in a pan, and boil them on the
fire for half a quarter of an hour. Add just a bit of red wine if you do not have
enough grapes. Let them cool, and strain through cheesecloth.
For four platters, take two ounces of cinnamon, two ounces of sugar and a
half ounce of ginger, and strain everything except the sugar through cheese-
cloth. If you do not have grapes, use mulberries.2

Despite the work of chefs like Tirel, the French did not immediately
adopt the notion of haute cuisine seen, for example, in the works of Bartolo-
meo Scappi. Montaigne even ridiculed what he saw as the absurd hyperbole
of an Italian chef in describing his cuisine: “He expounded to me a distinc-
tion in appetites: that which exists before eating, that after the second and
third courses; how sometimes simply to gratify it, sometimes to arouse and
stimulate it; the care of his sauces, first in general, and the going into par-
ticulars as to the qualities of the ingredients and their effect.”3 He then made
certain his contempt for such nonsense was clear: “And all this inflated with
rich and magnificent words and even such as are used in discoursing about
government of an empire.”4 French cuisine might have been on its way to
becoming haute, but it was not yet ready to be accorded the status of art,
nor was it a subject worthy of study. It certainly did not yet deserve the kind
of detailed discourse in which even casual eaters engage today. Montaigne
would be rolling in his grave—with laughter—to learn that volumes, such as
the one you are reading, even exist, let alone that it is just one of thousands
of similar books.
Tirel’s cookbook may have been the first French volume of “gourmet”
cookery, but it was not the first food book written in France. That honor
goes to Anthimus’s De observatione ciborum (On the observance of foods).
Anthimus was a fifth-century Byzantine, stationed for a time as an ambas-
sador in Gaul, where he wrote the book. It was not really a cookbook so
much as a guide to healthy eating, one that drew heavily on humoral notions
of medicine.
The humors were four bodily fluids (and their corresponding tem-
peraments)—black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood—and the balance

17
 CHAPTER 2

between them controlled one’s health, according to the writings of Hip-

pocrates. Various foodstuffs were prescribed to restore humoral equilib-
rium, but sugar was thought to be in perfect balance, which might explain
its presence in so many recipes of the day. Humoral medicine (and related
diets) dominated until, during the Renaissance, Galen’s writings replaced it.
Anthimus frequently mentioned sauces, but usually only to add ingredi-
ents to unspecified sauces (of which, presumably, his readers were already
aware). Like many popular modern cookbooks, his focused on health—at
least as it was understood at the time. Also, like writers of many of today’s
diet-based cookbooks, he was fond of listing all the foods one must never
eat. The puritanical killjoy approach to gastronomy is hardly new.

Historical Recipe: Lentils

Lentils are good when washed and carefully boiled in fresh water. Make sure
that the first lot of water is poured away, and a second lot of hot water added
as required, but not too much, and then boil the lentils slowly on the hearth.
When they are cooked, add for flavour a little vinegar, together with the ad-
dition of that spice which is called Syrian sumach. Sprinkle a spoonful of this
spice over the lentils while they are still on the fire, and stir in well. Take the
lentils off the fire and serve. You can add a good spoonful of oil from unripe
olives to the second water while the lentils are still cooking, as well as one or
two spoonfuls of coriander including the roots—not ground but whole—and
a pinch of salt for seasoning.5

The offer of possible variations, giving the cook a chance to express his
or her tastes, has a modern flavor. Distinctly less modern was Anthimus’s
opinion about cheesy sauces: “Whoever eats baked or boiled cheese has no
need of another poison, because after the oil has been separated pure stones
are produced; nor should it be boiled, because it becomes salty when the
oil is lost. To prove this, boil some cheese, take it from the fire, put it away
to cool, and it grows stonelike or salty. Similarly, what benefit can cheese
confer when ingested after being baked, except to produce pure stones?”6
Also in keeping with tradition, his book makes clear that Roman ap-
proaches to food were still in effect after the fall of the empire—including the
use of spices, which continued well into the medieval period.
At roughly the same time as Tirel’s book (1324), a collection of Catalo-
nian recipes was published, anonymously, as The Book of Sent Soví. The

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 O ld W ine in N ew B ottles

little book contained seventy-two recipes, at least a dozen of which are

for sauces (the number is approximate, because some other recipes, such
as gelatin and various purées, might have served as sauces but are not so
described). Sent Soví ’s take on cameline sauce is more detailed than many
medieval recipes—though the recipes are clearly not written in a form mod-
ern cook might recognize.

Historic Recipe: Salsa Camillina

If you want to make camel sauce, make almond milk out of unpeeled almonds
with a good chicken broth. After that, mince the chicken livers and blend
them with the milk. Set it to boil, and put in sugar and pomegranate wine or
red vinegar or verjuice—however, always be sure that it is red verjuice—and
cinnamon as the largest portion, and ginger and other good spices and pep-
per, and the same with cloves, grains of paradise, nutmeg, two types of pep-
per, and white sugar. Let it boil a lot, and, when it is well cooked, flavor it
with salt, spices, and verjuice and sweetening. And, if you want, you can put
in a couple of roasted or boiled chickens or capons, which you should leave a
while with the almond milk. And put in a lot of the roasted chicken’s grease.7

This is a typically complex medieval recipe, combining sweet and savory,

with lots of costly spices—plus a few forms of sugar, which was imported
and treated as a spice. The anonymous author, like Anthimus, made many of
his recipes adaptable for health reasons (though the medieval idea of which
foodstuffs were beneficial to one’s health differs somewhat from ours). This
recipe shares some of the characteristics of our pestos or chimichurris:

Historic Recipe: Salsa Verd

If you want to make green sauce, take parsley leaves, and wash the tender
parts, and dry them in the sun, or without sun. Grind them well with cin-
namon and ginger, and cloves, pepper and toasted hazelnuts. Put in a good
measure of each ingredient and taste it, and if you see one thing is more evi-
dent than another, balance it to be equal. [A]nd one can put in bread, toasted
and soaked in vinegar. Put in honey or sugar for a delicate or sick person.8

Tirel’s Le viandier of Taillevent was so successful that it was soon flat-

tered by imitation, not least by The Forme of Cury. That compendium of
medieval dishes was assembled in the last decade of the fourteenth century,

19
 CHAPTER 2

allegedly by the kitchen staff of Richard II. Its take on cameline sauce is typi-
cal of the recipes purloined from Tirel.

Historic Recipe: Sawse Camelyne

Take Raysouns of Coraunce. & kyrnels of notys. & crustes of brede & pow-
dour of gyngur clowes flour of canel. bray it wel togyder and do it yerto. salt
it, temper it up with vynegur. and serue it forth.9

Translated for modern cooks, it reads something like this:

Take raisins of Corinth [what we call dried currants], shelled nutmeats, bread
crusts, and powdered ginger, cloves, and cinnamon. Pound them together
well, adjust seasoning with salt, brighten with vinegar, and serve it forth.

An equally confusing recipe is this one for a roast goose (with rough
translation to follow):

Historic Recipe: Sawse Madame

Take sawge. persel. ysope. and saueray. quinces. and peeres, garlek and
Grapes. and fylle the gees flerwith. and sowe the hole flat no grece come
out. and roost hem wel. and kepe the grece flat fallith flerof. take galytyne
and grece and do in a possynet, whan the gees buth rosted ynowh; take an
smyte hem on pecys. and flat tat is withinne and do it in a possynet and put
flerinne wyne if it be to thyk. do flerto powdour of galyngale. powdour douce
and salt and boyle the sawse and dresse fle Gees in disshes and lay fle sowe
onoward.10

Not too easy to read, is it? Perhaps this is simpler:

Take sage, parsley, hyssop, summer savory, quinces, and pears, garlic and
grapes. Fill the geese therewith and sew the hole shut so to avoid losing too
much fat. Roast them well and reserve any fat that accumulates. Take galytyne
[sauce made with meat juices, thickened with bread] and grease and place in
a small pot, when the geese have roasted enough; chop them into pieces. Add
wine to the small pot if the sauce is too thick. Add powdered galangal, sweet
powder [a variable mixed spice usually containing ginger, cinnamon, clove,
and nutmeg—similar to our pumpkin pie spice], and salt. Boil the sauce and
place the geese in serving dishes, pouring the sauce over them.

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 O ld W ine in N ew B ottles

In 1508, Wynkyn de Worde published The Boke of Keruynge (The book

of carving), a collection of instructions for the tableside carving of meats.
This duty was one of the privileges of men of nobility—and nobility was one
of the rewards of being a successful warrior. While noblemen were expected
to master the courtly art of carving, sauce making would have been beneath
them. Nonetheless, The Boke of Keruynge is careful to point out the proper
sauces that should accompany its bewildering menagerie of roasted beasts.

Mustard is good with brawn, chine of beef, bacon and mutton. Verjuice is
good with boiled chickens and capon; swan with chawdrons; ribs of beef with
garlic, mustard, pepper, verjuice; ginger sauce with lamb, pig and fawn; mus-
tard and sugar with pheasant, partridge and coney; sauce gameline with her-
ons, egret, plover and crane. With whimbrel and curlew: salt, sugar and water
of tame; with bustard, shoveller and bittern: sauce gameline. Woodcock,
lapwing, lark, quail, martin, venison and snipe with white salt. Sparrows and
thrushes with salt and cinnamon. Thus each meat has its appropriate sauce.11

Chawdron is a sauce of swan stock and wine flavored with spices (cloves,
ginger, and pepper) and salt and thickened with swan’s blood and bread.
Gameline is a variant spelling of cameline. A whimbrel is a curlew-like shore-
bird, and coney is just another word for rabbit.
Lords and ladies of the sixteenth century did not limit their protein con-
sumption to beasts of the land and air. Waters, both salt and fresh, teemed
with creatures, large and small, each of which called for its particular sauce.

Mustard is good with salt herring, salt fish, salt conger, salmon, sparling,
salt eel and ling. Vinegar is good with salt porpoise, salt tuna, salt sturgeon,
thorpole and salt whale; galantine with lamprey; verjuice with roach, dace,
bream, mullet, bass, flounders, sole, crab; powdered cinnamon with chub.
With thornback, herring, houndfish, haddock, whiting and cod: vinegar,
powdered cinnamon and ginger. Green sauce is good with green fish, halibut,
cuttlefish and fresh turbot. Do not put your green sauce away, it is good with
mustard.12

Galantine, in the Middle Ages, did not refer to the showpiece of today’s
garde manger. It was a sauce made from the spiced jelly released when cook-
ing eels or lampreys, thickened with breadcrumbs or other bread-thickened
sauces, and flavored with galingale (galangal, Cyperus longus).

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 CHAPTER 2

The desire for systematic thought and the imposition of logical structure
on the world really took off with the Enlightenment. Following the Novum
organum of Francis Bacon (1561–1626), the encyclopedists, under Denis
Diderot (1713–1784), assembled the massive Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire
raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, and Linnaeus (1707–1778)
invented biological taxonomy. The desire for order—and to understand the
underlying principles that reveal connections between everything we experi-
ence or help us to distinguish between similar things—was clearly in the air
during the so-called long eighteenth century.
This led to the evolution of the natural philosophy of the ancients into
something like what we call science. Alchemy, for example, matured into
chemistry. Whereas the alchemists wanted to extract the essence of things—
essentially to discard the gross corporeal substance in favor of its rarified
spirit (the retort, used for distilling, is practically a symbol for the alche-
mist’s art)—cooks of the sixteenth century began to see things differently:
“The French reined in alchemy to serve the sensual table, literally debasing
the spiritual essences. Similarly, the new science reined in and co-opted
alchemy by taking over its technological base while jettisoning its cosmologi-
cal assumptions. Cookery forced Paracelsian ideas into sensual submission,
much as science checked them by cutting the occult web of influences.”13
In cooking, recipes had been collected for more than a millennium with
little thought about how they related to one another. The minds of the
Enlightenment must have seen that as a fundamental weakness. Consider
Diderot’s entry on sauce:

Liquid composition in which cooks cook various types of dishes, or which

they make separately to eat with meat when they are cooked. Our modern
sauces are rather known, but perhaps it will be helpful to find here some of
the cooking sauces of our ancestors that Monsieur Sauval has described in his
antiquities of Paris. These sauces are yellow sauce, hot sauce, compote sauce,
mustard sauce or galantine, sauce rapée, green sauce, and finally camelaine.
Yellow sauce was made with white pepper, which our forefathers named
jaunet. It was part of a number of hot sauces. In compote sauce, black pep-
per is used.
Mustard sauce or galantine was made with the root of this plant, which
our botanists no longer know. It was perhaps nothing other than the horse-

22
 O ld W ine in N ew B ottles

radish we presently put into our sauces, which is neither less hot nor less
spicy than galantine.
Sauce rapée was made with verjuice of grapes or green currants.
Green sauce (which we still know) had among other ingredients ginger and
verjuice, and was made green with parsley juice or green wheat. Next white
bread crumbs were added.
Regarding camelaine, which took its name from a medicinal plant we no
longer know, it was made with cinnamon, ginger, cloves, mustard seed, wine,
verjuice, bread, and vinegar. As such it was the most complex of all the sauces
of that time.
The right to make and sell sauces once belonged to merchant-spicers, who
consequently took the name spicers-apothecaries-saucers. But since then, the
name and the product have passed to master-vinegarists, who still at present
count among their qualities that of master-saucer.
Sauce Robert, as a cook’s term, is onions seasoned with mustard and
cooked in the fat of a pork loin or other cut which has been mixed with the
sauce dabbed on it.
Cooks also call green sauce a sauce made with green wheat, toast, pepper,
and salt, all ground together and passed through a cloth.14

Sauce Robert is the only sauce that is even recognizable to us today. Ac-
cording to legend, it was invented in the early seventeenth century and gets
its name from saucier Robert Vinot. It is significant for its incorporation of
butter, which was to become an iconic ingredient in French sauce cookery.
“Butter is not found in recipes for sauces in the fourteenth- and fifteenth-
century cookery works from England, France, or Italy, but it does begin to
appear there in the first half of the sixteenth century. Eight percent of the
recipes for sauces in Le Livre fort excellent contain butter. It appears in 39
percent of La Varenne’s sauce recipes and climbs to 55 percent of Menon’s
in La Cuisière bourgoise.”15
François Pierre La Varenne, in Le cuisinier françois (1651), began to
formulate a system of sauces that broke with heavily spiced medieval tradi-
tions. Roux, made with flour and lard, was his preferred thickener. He never
achieved anything like the taxonomy we’d prefer, but his book was, after all,
a cookbook—an Enlightenment-era cookbook, but a cookbook nonetheless.
As a first attempt to grapple with the complexities of sauce taxonomy,
Diderot’s entry is barely acceptable for our use. Not only are most of the

23
 CHAPTER 2

sauces mentioned unfamiliar to us, but the entry itself also lacks the kind of
intellectual rigor we would expect from, say, Linnaeus.
We must look elsewhere for a comprehensive approach to the classifica-
tion of sauces.

24
 3

NINETEENTH
CENTURY

F ortunately, others have attempted to improve (or systematize) cooking,

each time making small gains.

CARÊME

Antoine Carême (1784–1833), a giant in the history of French cooking,

rose to prominence at a time when postrevolutionary France was literally
building itself anew. It’s no accident that he was famous for the architec-
tural splendor of his creations or that he wanted to build a culinary sys-
tem that reflected a modern taste for order and reason. France’s political
revolution and Carême’s culinary revolution are both descended from the
ideals of the Enlightenment.
In his 1854 book L’art de la cuisine française au dix-neuvième siecle
(The art of French cooking in the nineteenth century), he attempted to
impose order on the chaos of French sauces. With characteristic smugness,
he asserted that French sauces were superior to those of any other nation.
He listed dozens of them (some derived—and improved through “French-
ification”—from non-Gallic sources: “sauce italienne, sauce vénitienne,
sauce hollandaise, sauce russe, sauce polonaise, sauce portugaise, sauce
milanaise,” and on and on) but wanted to do more than compile a Diderot-
like catalog. He was the first to understand that there might be a way to do

25
 CHAPTER 3

more than assemble a listing of the endless variety of sauces. He wanted to

understand the unifying structure behind all that complexity.
He proposed four grandes sauces, from which, he asserted, all the others
could be derived. Sauce velouté is made today from reduced veal or chicken
stock, using raw bones, thickened with white roux of flour and butter.
Carême’s version:

Ingredients
1 oz. butter
1 oz. flour
3 glassfuls stock—preferably veal
to taste salt and pepper
pinch nutmeg
pinch ground ginger

Method
1. Melt the butter and stir in the flour.
2. Add gradually the stock, ginger, nutmeg, and seasoning.
3. Bring to a boil and simmer, skimming occasionally, until reduced by half.
4. The sauce should now be thick but light and creamy. Add cream to turn
this into the white glaze for chicken à l’ivoire.1

Sauce béchamel was once made by adding heavy cream to velouté but is
prepared today from scalded milk, thickened with a pale roux of flour and
butter. Carême’s version:

Ingredients
½ oz. butter
2 Tbsp. flour
½ pint milk
to taste salt and pepper
to taste grated nutmeg
1 shallot, stuck with a clove
bouquet garnie

Method
1. Heat the butter and stir in the flour and add, gradually, the milk, shallot,
nutmeg, and bouquet garnie.

26
 N ineteenth C entury

2. Simmer very slowly for 20 minutes, remove bouquet garnie and shallot
before serving.2

Sauce espagnole is made from reduced veal stock, using roasted bones,
thickened with slightly browned roux of flour and butter. Carême’s version:

Ingredients
2 oz. butter
1 oz. flour
1 pint dark meat stock
bouquet garnie
1 oz. tomato purée

Method
1. Melt the butter, stir in the flour and cook gently on a low heat until well
browned.
2. Add the stock and stir until it thickens.
3. Add the bouquet garnie and simmer half an hour. By this time the sauce
will have reduced.
4. Remove the bouquet garnie, add the tomato purée and simmer another
five minutes.3

Sauce allemande is essentially an enriched velouté, substituting egg yolks

and heavy cream for the pale roux of béchamel. Its richness is brightened
today with a few drops of lemon juice. Carême’s version:

Ingredients
1 oz. butter
1 oz. flour
½ pint boiling water
to taste salt and pepper
1 egg
3 drops wine vinegar

Method
1. Melt the butter, add the flour and then the boiling water and seasoning.
2. Off the heat, whisk well the egg and vinegar and add gradually to the sauce
whilst whisking. Do not reboil.4

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 CHAPTER 3

Obviously these sauces are but slight variations on velouté, basically

exchanging the base liquid and varying the degree to which the roux is
cooked before being added. The technique is essentially the same: they’re
starch-thickened sauces, as ancient and firmly rooted in tradition as any-
thing from Mesopotamia.
Unlike the celebrity chefs who would follow him, Carême did not
cook in restaurants. He often worked for royalty, in immense kitchens,
and some of his prestige was a consequence of his close association with
the high and mighty.5 His culinary fame marks a transition from the great
private chefs of the distant past (like Guillaume Tirel) and more modern
examples (like Auguste Escoffier). Today’s celebrity chefs generally come
from the restaurant industry.
While Carême’s organization might make practical sense in a profes-
sional kitchen’s procedures, it feels arbitrary and incomplete. One need
only consider sauce mayonnaise (which Carême wrote about at length else-
where but failed to include among his grandes sauces) to see the limitations
of his system. Raymond Sokolov writes in The Saucier’s Apprentice, “Some
people. . . say mayonnaise, others mahonnaise, still others bayonnaise. . . .
Carême was convinced that his etymology made the most sense: [his pre-
ferred] magnonaise came from the verb ‘manier,’ to handle or work, which
he argued, was exactly what one did to produce a good mayonnaise.”6 The
fact that he recognized mayonnaise’s distinguishing attribute to be its pro-
cess rather than its ingredients (not to mention an entirely different method
of thickening) should have led him to rethink his sauce taxonomy. But he
didn’t. It was a valiant attempt but hardly the best solution to the problem
he set for himself.

BRILLAT-SAVARIN

Jean Antheleme Brillat-Savarin (1755–1826), whose name is practically syn-

onymous with gastronomy—fine dining and especially thinking about fine
dining—completed The Physiology of Taste: Or, Transcendental Gastron-
omy only months before his death. Had he not written it, he would barely be
remembered today. The book mentions sauce just three times, twice merely

28
 N ineteenth C entury

in passing. However, Book 6, “On Food in General,” discusses two ancient

Roman sauces: muria and garum.

The first was nothing but the brine of the tunny, or rather the juice which
flowed from it when it was salted. Garum, which was more costly, is much
less well known to us. It is believed that it was made by pressing the seasoned
entrails of the scomber or mackerel, but if that were so its high price would
not be justified. There is reason to believe that it was an imported sauce,
perhaps that soy which comes to us from India and which is known to be the
result of letting certain fishes ferment with mushrooms.7

Brillat-Savarin was certainly mistaken about garum being imported (the

Romans had garum “factories” all around the Mediterranean) and about it
being soy sauce. Neither came from India, nor was garum made from fish
and mushrooms. He was closer to the mark when thinking about what these
sauces had in common.
One of Brillat-Savarin’s most brilliant “discoveries” was of something
that doesn’t exist, despite his conviction that it did. His “osmazome” was
to gastronomy what “phlogiston” was to early physical science: an invented
term for something unobservable in order to explicate the inexplicable.

Osmazome is that preeminently sapid part of meat which is soluble in cold

water, and which differs completely from the extractive part of the meat,
which is soluble only in water that is boiling.
It is osmazome which gives all their value to good soups; it is osmazome
which, as it browns, makes the savory reddish tinge in sauces and the crisp
coating on roasted meat, finally it’s from the osmazome that comes the special
tangy juices of venison and game.8

A lot of Brillat-Savarin’s “science” was little more than wishful thinking,

but it foreshadowed two actual scientific discoveries: the Maillard reaction
(discovered in 1910 by Louis Camille Maillard), which provides the tasty
browning on roasted meats and other foods, and umami (discovered in 1908
by Kikunae Ikeda), the savory taste that was only proven to be the fifth basic
taste in 2001. As we shall see, the qualities that he assigned to “osmazome”
are essential to many of the sauces we’ll be discussing here.

29
 CHAPTER 3

SOYER AND BOTTLED SAUCES

The nineteenth century was a great time for inventors, and Alexis Benoist
Soyer (1810–1858) was a prime example. Soyer, another early celebrity
chef, is best remembered as a kitchen innovator. His kitchens featured gas
stoves and ovens, the temperatures of which could be set, and a precursor
of the modern refrigerator (it was not an ice box but cooled its contents
through the evaporation of water).
Soyer was one of the first chefs to confront the problem of feeding large
numbers of people in inconvenient circumstances. In 1847, he developed
portable stoves that could be set up in impromptu soup kitchens to help

An engraving of Soyer by Henry Bryan Hall, 1858. Source: Public domain

30
 N ineteenth C entury

feed the victims of Ireland’s potato famine. He improved on the Soyer Stove
for use in the Crimean War (1853–1856), refining the one he had created
to deal with the Great Irish Famine in order to feed troops in the field. His
traveling kitchen included an ironclad horse-drawn cart with stove and a
hundred-gallon-capacity steam digester—a forerunner of today’s pressure
cookers. It weighed a ton but was vastly more efficient than any other field
kitchen used by armies of the day.
He wrote a number of cookbooks, mostly meant to modernize cooks’
methods. One book, The Gastronomic Regenerator (1846), sorts sauces into
large and small sauces, a system that was roughly equivalent to mother and
daughter sauces. He numbered all his recipes so that a cook could easily
construct a given “small sauce” from one or more of his other recipes. He
provided some basic rules for sauce makers:

All kinds of fish sauce should be thicker for boiled fish than for broiled or fried.
Brown sauce should be a little thinnish and the colour of a horse-chesnut
[sic].
White sauce should be of the colour of ivory, and thicker than brown sauce.
Cream, or Dutch sauce, must be rather thick, and cannot be too white.
Demi-glace requires to be rather thin, but yet sufficiently reduced to enve-
lope any pieces of meat, game, poultry, &c., with which it is served.9

Today we tend to think of Italian sauces as “red,” being based on to-

matoes. The very first Italian tomato sauce appeared in Antonio Latini’s
Lo scalco alla moderna (The modern steward) in 1692. It was based on a
tomato sauce from Spain.

Historic Recipe: Salsa di Pomodoro alla Spagnola

Take half a dozen ripe tomatoes and roast them in embers, and when they are
charred, carefully remove the skin, and mince them finely with a knife. Add as
many onions, finely minced, as desired; chiles, also finely minced; and a small
amount of thyme. After mixing everything together, add a little salt, oil, and
vinegar as needed. It is a very tasty sauce, for boiled dishes or anything else.10

By the nineteenth century Soyer was listing two versions of sauce à

l’italienne, neither of which were red or looked like anything you might find
on spaghetti or pizza. The modular nature of his recipes is quite apparent.

31
 CHAPTER 3

Historic Recipe: No. 30. Sauce à l’Italienne

Put two tablespoonfuls of chopped onions and one of chopped eschalots in
a stewpan with three tablespoonfuls of salad oil, stir them ten minutes over a
sharp fire; then add a wine-glassful of sherry, a pint of brown sauce (No. 1),
and half a pint of consommé (No. 134), set it over a sharp fire until it boils,
then place it at the corner, let it simmer ten minutes, skim off all the oil which
it will throw up, then place it over the fire, stir with a spoon, reducing it until
it adheres to the back of it, then add a teaspoonful of chopped parsley, a
tablespoonful of chopped mushrooms, a little sugar, salt if required, and fin-
ish with the juice of half a lemon.11

Historic Recipe: No. 31. Sauce à l’Italienne (white)

Italian sauce for any description of fish, white meat, or poultry, must be made
white, which is done by following the directions of the preceding receipts,
only substituting white sauce (No. 7) for the brown, and finishing with three
spoonfuls of cream.12

He does, however, follow with a red sauce—but it is decidedly French in

character and preparation, and it would never be confused with spaghetti sauce.
Historic Recipe: No. 37. Sauce aux Tomates
Procure two dozen ripe tomates, take out the stalk, squeeze out the juice and
the seeds, then put them into a stewpan with a little salt, stew until tender, and
drain them upon a sieve; then, in another stewpan, put two onions, part of a
carrot, and a turnip, all cut in very thin slices, with a bunch of parsley, two
sprigs of thyme, two bay-leaves, two cloves, a blade of mace, a clove of garlic,
two ounces of lean uncooked ham, and a quarter of a pound of butter; place
the stewpan over a moderate fire, stir the mirepoix round occasionally, until
the vegetables are tender, then add the tomates, stir them over the fire another
minute, then stir in six ounces of flour, and add two quarts of consommé (No.
134); boil altogether twenty-five minutes, keeping it stirred, season it with a
little salt, sugar, and cayenne pepper, then rub it through a tammie; put it
into another stewpan, set it over the fire, when boiling place it at the corner,
let simmer ten minutes, skim well, then pour it in a basin, and use where di-
rected. If no tomates, use two bottles of preserved tomates. If too thick, dilute
it with a little more consommé.13

Through his travels, Soyer learned a lot about the food of the eastern
Mediterranean. He adapted some of the dishes he encountered there—in

32
 N ineteenth C entury

the way the French typically adapt foreign recipes, with results that barely
resemble their inspiration (though, in this case, Soyer incorporates several
British prepared sauces as well). For example:

Historic Recipe: No. 64. Sauce à la Beyrout

Put a tablespoonful of chopped onions into a stewpan with one of Chili vin-
egar and one of common vinegar, eighteen spoonfuls of melted butter, four of
brown gravy, two of mushroom catsup, and two of Harvey sauce; then place it
over the fire, keep stirring until boiling, then place it at the corner of the stove,
let it simmer five minutes, skim it well, then place it again over the fire and
stir until it adheres to the back of the spoon, then add two tablespoonfuls of
essence of anchovies, and half a teaspoonful of sugar; it is then ready to serve.
The above is a fish sauce, but may be used for meat or poultry by substituting
white sauce (No. 7) for melted butter (No. 71).14

Soyer was very interested in sauces that boosted levels of umami—or, as

Brillat-Savarin would have said, “osmazome.” Interestingly enough, both
looked to the sauces of the ancient Romans for guidance. According to Soyer,
“In all ages and countries. . . sauces of various kinds have been an accompani-
ment. With the Romans, in the time of Lucullus, great care was observed in
their preparation; amongst others which they used, and the most celebrated,
was the Garum and the Muria. The Garum was the sauce the most esteemed
and the most expensive, its composition is unknown. This is a subject well
worth the attention of the epicures of the present day.”15 Like Brillat-Savarin,
Soyer made some guesses about these sauces’ ingredients. He suspected
mushrooms and mackerel but was vague about their species. He was certainly
right about mushrooms and salted fish being sources of “osmazome,” even if
mushrooms weren’t needed to provide it in garum and muria. In 1853, he
even patented something called “Soyer’s Osmazome Food,” which was never
actually marketed. Soyer’s patent application includes instructions for mak-
ing what appears to have been concentrated beef stock: “Separate the fibrous
part from the gravy, which is reduced by boiling, and afterwards deposited in
bottles, or other receptacles, which are subjected to heat, and sealed, and in
which it will keep till required.”16 He was, unfortunately, somewhat ahead of
his time (John Lawson Johnston created Bovril in the 1870s).
What is demi-glace, ultimately, but a form of concentrated beef stock?
Here’s Soyer’s recipe for that unctuous substance, the foundation of so

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 CHAPTER 3

many sauces—or, as he put it, “This sauce is the real key to cooking a good
and ceremonious dinner”:

Historic Recipe: Demi-Glaze

Put a pint of brown sauce in a middle-sized stewpan, add to it half a pint of
broth or consommé, put it on the stove, stir with wooden spoon, let it boil as
fast as possible, take the scum off which will rise to the surface, reduce it until
it adheres lightly to the spoon, pass it through a sieve or tammy into a basin,
stir now and then until cold, to prevent a skin forming on the top, put it by
until wanted for use. It will keep for a week in winter, by adding half a gill of
white broth every other day, and giving it a boil; the addition of a tablespoon-
ful of tomatos [sic], gives it a beautiful color.17

Nicolas-François Appert had invented canning in corked glass bottles

only in 1811, and Soyer began selling bottles of three of his prepared condi-
ments (Soyer’s Diamond Sauce, Kalos Geusis, and Versailles Sauce) in the
mid-1840s through a company called William Clayton & Company. Appar-
ently the Clayton firm had poor marketing skills; nothing came of the ven-
tures. Then, in 1848, he connected with a couple of young men, Edmund
Crosse and Thomas Blackwell, who had just purchased a company that had
previously, as West & Wyatt, produced jams, jellies, and preserves. They
opened a shop on the southwest corner of Soho Square and bottled their
line of products at the nearby former West & Wyatt factory.
Their first collaborations were Soyer’s Sauce, offered in two flavors—mild
for the ladies and hot for the gentlemen. Crosse & Blackwell had bought the
licenses to all the Clayton sauces, and it’s possible that these two new sauces
were reworkings of the recipe for Soyer’s Diamond Sauce, which had been
advertised as a perfect condiment for “cold or hot meat, poultry, game,
etc.”18 Like many modern bottled sauces, Soyer’s sauce for gentlemen came
with “recipes” on the label—the chef’s own recommendations:

For any kind of cold meat, game, and poultry, use it in moderation as it is. For
mutton, lamb, pork, and steaks, when properly boiled and seasoned, pour one
tablespoon or more, according to the quantity of meat, which you turn over in
the dish with a fork several times, than you will have a most excellent gravy.
In any sort of hash it is a very great improvement. For made dishes or entreés
put four tablespoonfuls of brown sauce to six of broth, and when quite hot add
two tablespoonfuls of Soyer’s Sauce; just boil it, and pour over your entreés.

34
 N ineteenth C entury

For general purposes put eight tablespoonfuls of water into a stewpan; when
boiling, add four ditto of the sauce, half an ounce of fresh butter mixed with a
quarter of an ounce of flour, stir quickly on the fire, add if required a little salt,
boil one minute, and pour over your dish of meat, game, or poultry.19

A year later, Crosse & Blackwell released Soyer’s Relish, “an entirely new
and economical condiment, adapted for all kinds of viands, which, by those
who have tasted, has been pronounced perfect.”20 It was extremely success-
ful, despite having a distinct—and distinctly un-Victorian—garlicky char-
acter. A review in The Observer raved, “At present we do not know of any
person who administers more assiduously and effectively to our corporeal
wants—at any rate, to our most craving of them—than the renowned Soyer.
. . . [W]e see him now compounding a sauce, which undoubtedly will prove
a ‘relish’ to the most used-up of palates.”21
In 1853, Crosse & Blackwell debuted Soyer’s Aromatic Mustard, “a
most exquisite combination of the genuine Mustard seed with various aro-
matic substances: infinitely superior to all preparations of Mustard.”22

By way of maintaining his character for novelty of invention in the gastro-

nomic art, M. Soyer has recently added another relish to his already numerous
dainties, with which to tickle the palates of his numerous patrons. This is a
condiment in the shape of aromatic mustard, which is decidedly an improve-
ment to the dinner table, and imparts an excellent flavour to meat and poultry,
whether hot or cold. It is not for the uninitiated to seek to dive into the secrets
of M. Soyer’s inventions; suffice it to say, that they ought to be satisfied with
tasting the aromatic mustard, and approving of so delicate and relishing an
addition to their “dainty dishes.” Doubtless it will go the round of the festive
board, and ensure for itself the appropriate motto of “cut and come again.”23

It’s probably only a coincidence that Soyer was born in Meauxen-Brie, a re-
gion so famous for its mustard that Brillat-Savarin is said to have exclaimed,
“If it isn’t Meaux, it isn’t mustard!”24
Soyer combined his eastern experiences with his obvious penchant
for technological tinkering to create a vaguely more authentic condiment.
Crosse & Blackwell marketed his Soyer’s Sultana Sauce, the first bottled
brown sauce and the ancestor of countless others, such as American A.1.
and Jamaican Pickapeppa. It appeared in 1857, and its advertisement
boasted that it was “a most refreshing and pleasing stimulant to the appetite,

35
 CHAPTER 3

composed principally of Turkish condiments combined with various culi-

nary productions of the East. It is an exquisite relish with Fish, Meat, Poul-
try, and Game, and forms a valuable addition to Soups, Minces, Hashes,
Stews, Meat Pies and Puddings, as well as to Salads of every description.
To Steaks and Chops it imparts a highly delicious and aromatic flavour.”25
Victorian marketing might sound like the spiel of a snake-oil barker, but
when combined with his celebrity status—which he worked very hard to
promote—it was effective. While not the first of his commercially produced
bottled sauces, it was certainly the best received.

Brown sauce. Source: Gary Allen

36
 N ineteenth C entury

Soyer’s mass-market approach to the licensing, production, and distribu-

tion of bottled sauces predates the efforts of American entrepreneur Henry
John Heinz by more than a decade. Like Heinz’s, Crosse & Blackwell’s
marketing emphasized the purity and cleanliness of their bottled sauces—
though Heinz capitalized on the idea by selling his products in clear glass
bottles.26 Between them, they revolutionized our use of sauces, making us
think of them less as kitchen products and more as something that just ap-
peared on our tables, practically without human effort.
Soyer, following the lead of Carême and predicting the system of Es-
coffier, said about sauces:

Sauces in cookery are like the first rudiments of grammar, which consists of
certain rules called Syntax, which is the foundation of all languages: these
fundamental rules are nine, so has cookery the same number of sauces,
which are the foundation of all others; but these, like its prototype the gram-
mar, have two—brown and white, which bear a resemblance to the noun
and verb, as they are the first and most easily learnt, and most constantly in
use; the others are the adjuncts, pronouns, adverbs, and interjections; upon
the proper use of the two principal ones depends the quality of all others,
and the proper making of which tends to the enjoyment of the dinner; for
to my fancy they are to cookery what the gamut is in the composition of
music, as it is by the arrangement of the notes that harmony is produced,
so should the ingredients in the sauce be so nicely blended, and that de-
lightful concord should exist, which would equally delight the palate, as a
masterpiece of a Mozart or a Rossini should delight the ear; but which, if
badly executed, tantalize those nervous organs, affect the whole system, and
prove a nuisance instead of a pleasure.27

Soyer’s words have a lovely metaphoric ring to them but unfortunately do

little to advance our understanding of the relationship between our vast col-
lections of possible sauce variations. Escoffier would try to modernize and
improve on Soyer’s approach. By “modernize,” we mean “simplify,” be-
cause the essence of modernity is simplification—conceptual streamlining.

37
 4

THE FRENCH WERE

NOT, OF COURSE,
THE ONLY SAUCIERS
A t first glance, Italian mother sauces look very familiar; even their spell-
ings reveal their connection to the French hierarchy (though there are
a few significant differences).
Besciamella is a white sauce made with pale roux and milk (this is essen-
tially the same as French béchamel, but it may be made with olive oil instead
of butter). Salsa vellutata is a light-colored sauce made with lightly cooked
roux and beef, chicken, or vegetable stock (again, much like the velouté of
France). Salsa spagnola is a brown sauce made with dark roux cooked in
butter or bacon fat, flavored with bay leaves, mirepoix, parsley, and tomato
(it’s the Italian version of sauce espagnole).
The simplest form of salsa pomodoro is just tomatoes and mirepoix, but
there are hundreds of variations. In French sauce tomate, the tomato base
is thickened with roux. Italians simply reduce the sauce to the desired con-
sistency, though sometimes pasta is finished in the sauce, and viscosity is
adjusted using a bit of the starchy pasta cooking water.
Maionese is a thick emulsion of egg, lemon, olive oil, and vinegar—basi-
cally the same as French mayonnaise.
In Spain, sauces are not divided into mother and daughter (or grand and
small) sauces, though the primary two—sofrito and picada—are the basis of
many other sauces. The Spanish do have a number of distinct sauce types,
however, and they vary somewhat geographically.

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 CHAPTER 4

Sofrito is both a mixture of aromatic ingredients used as a base for mak-

ing sauces and a sauce in its own right This garlicky tomato-based sauce is
enriched with olive oil and redolent of Iberian herbs (bay leaf, rosemary,
and thyme).
Picada, from Catalonia and Valencia, builds on sofrito to form other
sauces. It is made by pounding fried bread and nuts (usually almonds but
also hazelnuts, pine nuts, and/or walnuts), and it is added to other sauces
to thicken them. The Catalan “daughter” sauces of picada feature garlic,
parsley, and saffron. Those from Valencia often show more of the Moorish
influence (the Moors occupied the region until the fifteenth century), with
added spices such as cinnamon and cumin.
Allioli and maionese are closely related culturally and gastronomically.
According to some sources, the word “mayonnaise” derives, etymologically,
from the Spanish town of Majón, suggesting that the sauce originated there.
No one really knows, and its history is hotly contested. In any case, while
French aioli might include eggs (making more of a garlic-flavored mayon-
naise), the Spanish allioli is nothing but oil, garlic, and salt.
Pil-pil is a kind of Basque pan sauce in which olive oil, garlic, and a little
hot pepper are emulsified in the gelatin-rich juices that accumulate in the
cooking of seafood, often bacalao (salt cod) or shrimp.
Catalan romesco is a purée of Spanish chiles, thickened—in medieval
fashion—with fried bread and ground nuts.1
Salsa de tinta, another Basque specialty, includes simmered tomatoes in
a mixture of fish stock and local txakoli wine, blackened with squid ink. Like
romesco, it is thickened with fried bread.
Basque salsa verde is, like pil-pil, garlicky oil combined with the liquid in
which the fish was slowly cooked. Salsa verde differs from pil-pil in that it
contains a large amount of minced parsley.
Salsa vizcaina, another Basque specialty, is usually a smooth purée—
though sometimes left slightly chunky—of regional chiles (choriceros) and
tomatoes with olive oil, flavored with garlic, onions, and serrano ham. Aside
from the inclusion of ham, salsa vizcaina is merely salsa de tinta with chori­
ceros substituted for squid ink.
Spanish béchamel is the same as the French version, but it’s rarely used as
a sauce in its own right. It’s more often an ingredient in other preparations.

40
T he F rench W ere N ot , of C ourse , the O nly S auciers

Refrito de ajo is a simple, quick sauce made by deglazing the garlicky oil
left in the pan with sherry vinegar, then whisking to emulsify it.
Salsa española is a slightly less fussy take on French sauce espagnole. Gal-
lic cooks carefully strain out the spent mirepoix, then thicken the flavored
stock with roux, while Spanish sauciers merely purée the aromatics and stir
them back in.
Many of the sauces used in Greek dishes are basic cold vinaigrettes,
such as latholémono (oil and lemon juice) and lathóxsitho (oil and vinegar).
Greeks do prepare cooked sauces as well, among them the thin, custard-like
avgolemono, begun by whisking egg (or just egg yolks) together with lemon
juice, then tempering with a tiny amount of the hot broth in which the entrée
was cooked. More stock is slowly added during continuous whisking until
the desired viscosity is obtained. This fragile emulsion cannot be held; it
must be served immediately.
Greek béchamel is less fluid than the béchamels of France and Italy. It’s
almost custard-like, forming the thick layer atop baked dishes like moussaka
and pastitsio. That extra body comes from egg yolks and kefalotyri, a hard
cheese similar to Italian romano. The sauce’s delicate perfume comes from
freshly grated nutmeg.
Classic skordaliá was at one time a pounded emulsion of almonds and
garlic in oil and lemon juice. Today, it is often made with much cheaper
breadcrumbs or cooked potato instead of almonds.
Sáltsa domátas is the “mother” of all Greek tomato sauces. Tomato pu-
rée is slowly cooked with honey, olive oil, onions, and red wine. The basic
sauce can then go in a host of directions with the incorporation of assorted
herbs, plus cloves and garlic; cinnamon and parsley; cumin and parsley;
fresh mint; parsley and bay leaves; or just rigani (Greek oregano).
Greeks, like their neighbors throughout the eastern Mediterranean, em-
ploy a lot of dips. These flavorful sauces are not served on or under the en-
trees but appear on the table in separate bowls. This allows diners to adjust
their meals to their own tastes.
Further east, one finds that dishes of chickpea hummus are omnipresent,
but in Greece fáva is the rule. As you might guess, broad fava beans are the
legume of choice. Unlike hummus, fáva does not include tahini, though
yogurt is sometimes added. The Greeks do make hummus from chickpeas

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(they call it choúmous, a name clearly derived from the Arabic, suggesting
that the dish did not originate in Greece).
Another dip that exists, in various forms, throughout the region is
tzatziki. Tangy strained yogurt and refreshing chopped cucumber com-
bine with olive oil, lemon juice, and chopped fresh mint and/or dill to
form a dish that balances the attributes of salad and sauce. In fact, leaving
out the cucumber, one gets a sauce that accompanies souvláki (at least in
American diners).
Greek taramosaláta is something like a cross between a creamy salmon
mousse and a very fishy paté. The seafood, in this case, is the soft salted roe
of various fishes (carp, cod, or gray mullet, Mugil cephalus), blended into a
thick paste with lemon and olive oil. Like skordaliá, it was traditionally made
with pounded almonds, but today it is likely to be thickened more frugally
with bread or cooked potatoes.
The last, but not the least, of these Greek dipping sauces, melitzano-
saláta, is the scooped-out pulp of smoky grilled eggplant combined with
lemon juice, yogurt, garlic, parsley, and olive oil—seasoned with salt, pep-
per, and rigani (Greek oregano).
Elsewhere in the Middle East, we find some familiar dipping sauces—and
some that are quite different. One, a form of hot sauce that enlivens falafel,
combines minced garlic, chopped parsley, tomato paste, and harissa,
thinned with lemon juice and water and simmered to blend all the flavors.
Harissa is a hot North African condiment containing caraway, chiles,
cumin, coriander, garlic, olive oil, and sometimes mint, rose petals (a com-
mon ingredient in the Moroccan spice blend ras al hanout), and tomatoes.
It can be made at home, but most cooks spoon it from a jar or squeeze it out
of a convenient tube.
Hummus, unlike the Greek fáva, is made of puréed chickpeas (“hum-
mus” is just Arabic for “chickpea”). Virtually all of its ingredients have been
farmed in the region for the last ten millennia (one newcomer, lemon, has
only been a part of the local diet since the days of the Prophet Muhammad—
fourteen centuries ago). Recipes for hummus vary all over the region (Cy-
prus, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Turkey,
etc.) and have been around since the twelfth century. Everyone in the area,
regardless of nationality or religion, eats hummus—even if they disagree
about who invented it. This one (minus tahini but including a variety of

42
Jarred harissa, adjunct to many a tagine or dish of couscous. Source: Gary Allen
 CHAPTER 4

flavorings we no longer see in today’s recipes for hummus bi tahini) is from

a medieval text, Kanz al-Fawa’id fi tanwi’ al-Mawa’id:

Historic Recipe: Purée of Chickpeas with Cinnamon and Ginger

Cook the chickpeas in water, then mash them in a mortar to make a puree. Push
the puree through a sieve for wheat, unless it is already fine enough, in which
case this step is not necessary. Mix it then with wine vinegar, the pulp of pickled
lemons, and cinnamon, pepper, ginger, parsley of the best quality, mint, and
rue that have all been chopped and placed on the surface of the serving dish.
. . . Finally, pour over [this mixture] a generous amount of oil of good quality.2

Other local variations exist, of course. Most garnish their hummus with
olive oil (Turks occasionally use olive oil infused with hot chile). Other
garnishes include whole chickpeas, fried or toasted pine nuts, olives,
fresh herbs, or powdered spices (black pepper, cayenne, cumin, paprika,
or sumac). Israelis sometimes either top hummus with favas or replace
chickpeas with favas (in which case they call it ful) or add meat and/or
mushrooms to the chickpea purée. The Syrian fava-based version, ful
medammes, is (or was)3 traditionally garnished with Aleppo pepper flakes.
Egyptian, Iranian, Iraqi, Lebanese, Syrian, and Turkish hummus can
be flavored with cumin. Palestinians are likely to top their hummus with
paprika and herbs, such as mint and/or parsley. Jordanians and Turks oc-
casionally replace the tahini with yogurt.
Baba ganoush is hummus’s sister sauce. Soft grilled eggplant replaces the
chickpea purée. It’s the Levantine version of Greek melitzanosaláta. Like
hummus, it is served throughout the region (Armenia, Egypt, Iraq, Israel,
Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Turkey), again with some local
variations. Jordanian baba ganoush, mouttabal, substitutes salted yogurt for
regular yogurt or tahini. Most baba ganoush recipes are garnished like hum-
mus, though Iraqis might top it with pomegranate seeds. One Israeli version
(salat ḥatzilim), however, replaces the traditional tahini or yogurt with—of
all things—mayonnaise. Topped with fried onions, it suggests the influence
of European emigrants from the Jewish Diaspora. Syrian baba ganoush uses
neither lemon juice nor tahini nor yogurt; it does feature walnuts, pome-
granate molasses, tomato, and sweet red bell pepper and is garnished with
pomegranate seeds. An Iranian baba ganoush, mirza ghasemi, reveals the

44
T he F rench W ere N ot , of C ourse , the O nly S auciers

influence of South Asian cooking; it eliminates tahini and Levantine spices,

replacing them with tomatoes and turmeric. Another Iranian variation,
kashke bademjan, replaces yogurt or tahini with rehydrated kashk (pungent
central Asian dried yogurt) and ground walnuts. It’s flavored with fried gar-
lic, onions, and fresh mint leaves.
Dipping sauces based on olive oil are common through the Levant. Some
are as simple as a dish of oil, perhaps sprinkled with some dried herbs. Some
slightly more complicated (though “complicated” is a bit of an overstate-
ment) dips might include lemon juice, so they’re almost vinaigrettes. One
herb (or, rather, type of herb) that can be found mixed with oil on tables
anywhere east of the Mediterranean is za’atar. The fact that this name is
also used for omnipresent herb/spice mixtures merely adds to the confusion,
especially since either one could be part of that dipping oil.

Various mixtures are sometimes marketed as Za’atar (or Zathar). Thyme and
Sumac is a common version. Another is: Thyme, Salt, Sumac, and Toasted
Sesame. Yet another is: Thyme, Sumac and Summer Savory. I have also seen
a melange of Marjoram, Sesame, Sumac, Salt, and Olive Oil. They are prob-
ably as unsatisfactory as substitutions for Za’atar as Safflower is for Saffron.
“Za’tar” or “Za’atar” are [also] generic names for a whole group of Middle
Eastern herbs from the genera Origanum, Calaminta, Thymus and Satureja.
In Turkey, Kekik is a generic name for a group of herbs that include various
Oreganos, Marjorams, Savories, and Thymes.4

Either form of za’atar might be found as a garnish atop a mixture of olive oil
and labneh (a form of strained yogurt). The spice blend, along with chopped
cilantro and garlic, is a likely addition to dipping oil. Another Middle
Eastern spice blend, dukkah (an extremely variable mixture of toasted and
ground almonds and/or hazelnuts, plus seeds of coriander, cumin, fennel,
and sesame—and whatever else a cook might have on hand), might garnish
a dish of oil. There are countless other dips, but many of them diverge into
forms not liquid enough to be considered sauces.
Moroccans hull and roast the seeds of the argan tree (Argania spinosa)
and press a nutty aromatic oil, which is used as a dip for bread or a simple
sauce for couscous or tagines. They also grind toasted almonds in the oil to
make amlou, a much thicker dip.

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 CHAPTER 4

Many Far Eastern cuisines feature dipping sauces, usually based on soy
sauce, fish sauce, and the like; these will be addressed in detail elsewhere.
However, South Asia has a few that should be mentioned here.
Indian raita, in its most basic form, is just yogurt infused with cooling
mint. Countless variations exist, containing fruits (banana, grape, guava,
mango, pineapple, or pomegranate), pulses (sprouted green chickpeas,
boondi [a sweet made of chickpea flour], or bhujia sev/matki5 and gram/
chickpea flour), or vegetables (beet, carrot, cucumber, eggplant, onion,
potato, pumpkin, spinach, or tomato). South Indian pachadis are forms
of raita incorporating different flavors. Coconut, curry spices, ginger, and
mustard are common ingredients.
Chutneys are fruit pickles, some of which are thin enough to be con-
sidered sauces. Familiar ones for Indian restaurants include a raw purée of
fresh cilantro and mint, green chile, garlic, and ginger suspended in lemon
juice and sweetened water; and imli, a cooked sauce of moistened tamarind
(Tamarindus indica) pulp with spices (cumin, fennel, garlic, ginger, hing,6
and the blend garam masala7) in enough sugar water to provide the correct
dipping viscosity. Slightly less familiar are saunth (another cooked tamarind
sauce, this time with cumin, hot chile, garam masala, and powdered ginger,
plus kala namak8 and jaggery9) and tamatar kasundi (a sweet-sour and
spicy Bengali chutney based on tomatoes, seasoned with brown mustard
seeds, brown sugar, fresh chiles and chile powder, cumin, garlic, ginger, oil,
turmeric, and vinegar).
In Southeast Asia, a table that is not set with a bowl of dipping sauce is
almost unthinkable. Many derive their umami from fermented seafood. Bur-
mese, Indonesian, and Thai cooks lace their sauces with salty shrimp paste.
For the Vietnamese the omnipresent fish sauce (nuóc mám) becomes nuóc
chám—or nam chim kai for the Thais—when combined with garlic, minced
hot chile, lime juice, sugar, and vinegar. The same sauce, in Cambodia, is
called tirk trey chu p’em and might be garnished with chopped peanuts.
Vietnamese nuóc mám me—or Cambodian tirk umpel—adds tamarind paste
to the basic recipe. Adding ginger to nuóc chám yields nuóc mám gung (tirk
khngay in Cambodia). A cooked version of nuóc chám, with lemongrass and
onion, is Burmese ngan pya ye chet.
Vietnamese diners love to wrap foods in leaves (cool, crisp lettuce, for
example), spreading a bit of one of their dips and adding a handful of fresh

46
T he F rench W ere N ot , of C ourse , the O nly S auciers

herbs for a casual meal. Koreans have a similar approach; they call their
handheld wraps ssam. The leaves are more varied, however, with seasonal
choices like bean leaves, cabbage, lettuce, pumpkin leaves, and seaweed
(miyeok-wakame or dried gim-nori in Japanese). They spread the leaves with
ssamjang, literally “sauce for wrapped food.” These thick sauces are made
with the usual Korean ingredients—dark sesame oil, doenjang (fermented
soybean paste), gochujang (hot, sweet fermented chile paste), onion, garlic,
and scallion—and sometimes sweetened with brown sugar.
Indonesian sauces, generically called sambals, are complex compositions
of sweet, sour, hot, and umami. Many begin with shrimp paste (belachan),
tamarind paste, and hot chiles, pounded together to form a dark and sa-
vory paste called sambal oelek. That and sambal nasi goreng—thick, sweet
soy sauce (kecap manis), shallot, garlic, tamarind and shrimp pastes, and
chiles—are mass produced by a Dutch company, Conimex, reflecting more
than four centuries of trade between the two distant lands.
These Southeast Asian sauces are clearly related to each other, and many
of them reveal the influence of Chinese methods. Their cooks don’t seem to
have been concerned with trying to create taxonomies of mother and daugh-
ter sauces, as the French were.
Today, the foundation of most Chinese sauces is soybeans, fermented
with salt in various ways.10 Háoyóu (oyster sauce) is produced by long sim-
mering of raw oysters, straining out the spent oysters, and then adding more.
The process is repeated until the desired viscosity and intensity of umami
are achieved (though most commercial sauces get the same result, more
quickly, by mixing in soy sauce and starch).
Curiously, oyster sauce has an origin story similar to that of other sauces:
A cook—Li Jinshang, founder of Lee Kum Lee, still a major producer of
Chinese sauces—was, as the story goes, cooking oysters and forgot about
them until the liquid had almost boiled away. Noticing its rich aroma, he
tasted the resulting substance, and the rest is history. Unfortunately, while
entertaining, the same sort of questionable history recounts the discovery of
Worcestershire sauce and, for that matter, the origins of roast pork, as de-
scribed in Charles Lamb’s humorous essay, in which a farmer discovered a
delicious smell after his pig was lost when the barn burned down (and, from
then on, burned a barn every time he wanted roast pork)!

47
Typical oyster sauce. Source: Gary Allen
T he F rench W ere N ot , of C ourse , the O nly S auciers

Li Jinshang’s company has grown considerably since 1888. Its product

line, intended for home and restaurant kitchens, includes (in addition to five
oyster sauces) a dozen soy sauces, a couple of XO sauces, a large assortment
of ready-made sauces and dipping sauces, and an entire range of hot sauces,
including several variations on sriracha. Many of these products are fer-
mented—in other words, they are classically Chinese.
XO sauces are a century newer than oyster sauce. Originally from
Hong Kong, they are now made in several places. Dried scallops, shrimps,
ham, the salted roe of mentaiko (pollock, Pollachius spp.), tiny anchovies
(called shirasu), and/or other salted and dried fish provide a massive jolt of
umami, while garlic and onion add additional savoriness, and chile pepper
provides the final kick. XO sauce is used both in Cantonese cooking and
as a condiment at table.
In the New World, several different sauce traditions are in effect. Looking
at the oldest, first, we find the salsas. They were made from Mexico through
Central America and in parts of South America. Today, they are enjoyed
worldwide. These are suspensions of various vegetable or fruit purées—com-
monly chiles and tomatoes—in acidic fruit juices. They may be cooked or raw
but are generally produced in a mortar and pestle made of coarse-textured
lava rock, called a molcajete. The same device is used to make guacamole, a

Freshly made guacamole in a molcajete. Source: Gary Allen

49
 CHAPTER 4

smooth or lumpy mash of avocados that may or may not be garnished with
minced hot chiles (typically jalapeños or serranos), chopped tomato, onion,
garlic, or cilantro and is often moistened with lime juice.
Mexican moles and pipians are cooked sauces, the latter thickened with
pumpkin seeds, much like the ground nuts of Spanish picadas from which
they’re descended. Spanish romesco is another descendant of picadas.11 Pre-
Columbian Mexicans already made moles, but the complex spicing they
have now reflects the influence of the Moors on medieval Spanish cook-
ing (mole poblano, for example, incorporates many ingredients that hadn’t
existed in the New World before the Spanish arrived: almonds, cinnamon,
cloves, coriander seeds, raisins, and sesame seeds). Suspensions of pounded
herbs in oil and/or citrus juice or vinegar—like Argentinian chimichurri—­
rival salsas, but more as a condiment, at table, than as a dipping sauce.
Perhaps the biggest influence on the modern world’s use of sauces comes
from North America. A trip down the condiment aisle of any American gro-
cery store can be overwhelming. Since the nineteenth century, mass market-
ing of industrially produced sauces has nearly unified the eating habits of the
planet. Ketchup can be found everywhere—from the curry-flavored version
that tops hot dogs in Berlin to the slightly less vinegary one sold in Australia
as “tomato sauce.” American mustards—while not as prestigious as those
from Dijon or Düsseldorf—spread bright yellow cheer around the globe.
Hot sauces, barbecue sauces, dips, marinades, salad dressings, and salsas,
not to mention dessert toppings like caramel, hot fudge, and—may the world
forgive us—marshmallow fluff, abound.
The sheer number and variety of all these condiments, dips, and sauces
is mind boggling, but we believe there is a way to understand how they are
made and how they connect to or differ from each other.

50
 5

THE MODERN WORLD

OF COOKING BEGINS

I f the Enlightenment created an environment in which a taste for taxo-

nomic order could flourish, imagine what it was like in the first quarter
of the twentieth century. World War I had just wiped out the romantic
excesses of the fin de siècle and ushered in a newly recognizable modern
world. This was a world in which new media allowed rapid communica-
tion across vast distances. A world in which (in Germany’s Bauhaus, for
example) architects and designers were experimenting with a spare aesthetic
that abandoned frivolous decoration in favor of disciplined order. A world
in which mass production, à la Henry Ford’s assembly line, was making
individually produced items seem quaintly obsolete. A world in which ef-
ficiency, inspired by scientific thinking, was the new watchword. In that
intellectual milieu, Auguste Escoffier (1846–1935) refined the taxonomy
attempted by Antoine Carême.
Escoffier began his kitchen apprenticeship at the age of thirteen. By
eighteen, he had already been promoted to saucier at Le Petit Moulon
Rouge in Paris. In 1866, he served, briefly, in the French military at the
front in the Franco-Prussian War—and, like Alexis Soyer, he learned the
value of efficiency in preparing food (albeit at a more spartan level than he
had done in Paris) for large numbers of diners. At age thirty, he opened his
own restaurant, Le Faisan Doré, in Cannes. Eight years later, he began his
association with César Ritz, and from then on their careers were synony-
mous with the golden age of hotel restaurants. It was the sort of fast-paced

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work environment that depended on the organizational skills he brought

to the proverbial table.
Escoffier published four editions of his Guide culinaire—in which he laid
out his system of mother sauces—between 1903 and 1921. He later wrote,
“I didn’t want the Guide to be a luxurious work of art or a curiosity that
would be relegated to library shelves. I wanted it to be a work tool more than
a book, a constant companion that chefs would always keep at their side. . . .
I cannot pretend that it is exhaustive. Even if it were finished today, it would
be out-of-date tomorrow, because progress never stops.”1
Escoffier designed his system to simplify the workings of a professional
kitchen, but his culinary ideas reached a much larger audience, in part be-
cause of improvements in communication, much as the printing press had
enabled the diffusion of knowledge in the sixteenth century. His employees
also spread the word. According to Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson, “He
boasted that the two thousand or so chefs that he had trained in his kitchens
in Paris and in London were scattered all over the globe where their culinary
progeny practiced what the master preached.”2
Escoffier’s family tree of basic sauces allowed the sauciers in his brigade
de cuisine (another of his organizational inventions, one that reflected his
experience of military hierarchies during the war years) to simply add ingre-
dients to one of the “mother” sauces already on hand. This system permit-
ted them to make new “daughter” sauces without needing to start each sauce
from scratch. Escoffier was still producing haute cuisine in his luxurious
hotel restaurants, but, somewhere in the background, Henry Ford’s practi-
cality was at work in the kitchen.
Escoffier took Carême’s basic idea but tweaked it, adding categories
as needed and demoting one. He perfected the sauce allemande (German
sauce) but didn’t consider it one of the mother sauces. He wrote, “Alle-
mande Sauce or thickened Velouté is not, strictly speaking, a basic sauce.
However, it is so often resorted to in the preparation of other sauces that I
think it necessary to give it after the Veloutés, from which it is derived.”3
His variation on velouté, with elements of hollandaise, is enriched with
egg yolks, additional white stock, and mushroom liquor. When World War
I began—and all things German lost some of their cachet—he gave the first
of his daughter sauces a new name: sauce blonde. (Remember freedom fries?

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 T he M odern W orld of C ooking B egins

We were not the first to indulge in such nationalistic foolishness.) Now that
the hostilities are over, it’s better known as sauce parisienne.

LES FONDS: THE MOTHER SAUCES

Béchamel is a milk-based sauce, thickened with a white roux, seasoned with

salt, and flavored as needed. In America, it is simply called “white sauce.”

Historic Recipe: Béchamel

This sauce is made from equal parts butter and flour by weight, which com-
bine to make a white roux. Then milk and salt are added, along with other
spices depending on the recipe. Here is a basic béchamel recipe:

Ingredients
5 Tbsp. butter
4 Tbsp. flour
4 cups milk (can be adjusted for thickness)
2 Tbsp. salt
to taste pepper or nutmeg

Method
1. Heat the milk in a saucepan. While it is warming, melt the butter in an-
other pan.
2. Add the flour and stir to create a white roux. Slowly add the heated milk
in increments to the roux, whisking all the while. When the desired thick-
ness and smoothness is achieved, bring the mix to a boil.
3. Reduce the heat and stir frequently for 3 to 5 more minutes.
4. Add salt and pepper to taste.4

Escoffier’s version was considerably richer. He carefully cooked lean

veal and onions in butter, without browning them, and simmered them in
the béchamel along with a sprig of thyme. The sauce was of course strained
before use. The only time he made the sauce without veal was during Lent.
Velouté is a light stock-based sauce, thickened with a pale roux or—in some
modern versions—a liaison (a mixture of egg yolks and cream). Like béchamel,

53
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velouté starts with a roux. The main difference between the two sauces is that
velouté uses white stock as a liquid, while béchamel calls for milk.

Historic Recipe: Velouté

Ingredients
2 cups white stock (Velouté is traditionally made with veal stock.
However, chicken or fish stock will do.)
3 Tbsp. butter
3 Tbsp. flour
to taste salt and pepper

Method
1. Melt down the butter until it is frothy. Add the flour and stir frequently
to create a roux. Velouté is not as white as Béchamel, so allow the roux to
cook until it develops a golden color.
2. Whisk in the stock in half-cup increments until the mixture is smooth.
3. Then add the desired amount of salt and pepper.
4. Bring the sauce to a boil, then reduce the heat and let it simmer for around
20 minutes.5

As velouté was an essential element of Escoffier’s family of mother sauces,

he was very particular about its preparation: “I am not partial to garnishing
Velouté sauce with carrots, an onion with a clove stuck into it, and an herb
bunch, as many do. The stock should be sufficiently fragrant itself, without
requiring the addition of anything beyond the usual condiments.”6 He liked
the flavor imparted by mushroom peelings but used them only in preparing
his stock to avoid discoloring the delicate sauce.
Espagnole is a fortified brown veal-stock sauce, thickened with a brown
roux.

Historic Recipe: Espagnole

Ingredients
2 lb. mirepoix
8 oz. clarified butter
8 oz. flour
5 qt. brown stock

54
 T he M odern W orld of C ooking B egins

8 oz. tomato purée

1 bay leaf
½ tsp. thyme
¼ tsp. peppercorns
8 parsley stems

Method
1. Sauté mirepoix in butter until well browned.
2. Add flour and cook to make a brown roux.
3. Add the stock and tomato purée. Stir to break up any lumps of roux.
Bring to a boil and then immediately reduce to a simmer.
4. Add the sachet. Simmer for about 1.5 hours to reduce. Skim the surface
periodically.
5. Strain through a china cap with cheesecloth. Season to taste.7

Escoffier’s version takes much longer—up to two days longer—with addi-

tional brown stock added to make up for losses due to evaporation. When
the sauce is finished, it can be made into demi-glace by combining equal
parts of sauce and brown stock, reduced yet again, then fortified with “excel-
lent sherry. ‘Demi-Glace’ . . . is the base of all the smaller brown sauces.”8
Hollandaise is a cooked emulsion of egg yolk, butter, and lemon or vinegar.

Historic Recipe: Hollandaise

Ingredients
½ fl. oz. white vinegar
½ fl. oz. water
2 egg yolks
12 oz. clarified butter (heated to 52°C/125°F)
to taste lemon juice
to taste cayenne pepper

Method
1. Combine yolks, water, and vinegar.
2. Cook quickly over a double boiler until yolks are lighter in color and a
ribbon consistency, then remove from heat.
3. Heat clarified butter to 52°C/125°F.

55
 CHAPTER 5

4. Slowly add butter to yolks, whisking constantly. Add a few drops of

lemon juice if sauce seems too thick.
5. Season to taste with salt, cayenne and lemon juice.
6. Hot hold at 52°C/125°F for 1.5 hours maximum.9

Escoffier’s version is at once simpler and more elegant—and richer. It uses a

greater proportion of egg yolks and, instead of cayenne, mignonette pepper
(the highest-quality white pepper). To ensure a perfect texture, the finished
sauce is pushed through a fine sieve.
Sauce tomate is, as one would expect, tomato based—but, as with the
tomato sauce of Soyer, it does not resemble any tomato sauce (marinara or
puttanesca) one might find in a typical Italian red sauce joint. Like most of
Escoffier’s sauce recipes, it features both flour and butter. To quote Mark
Twain, completely out of context, “It is un-American. It is un-English. It
is French!”

Historic Recipe: Tomate

Ingredients
5 oz. salted breast of pork, rather fat
6 oz. carrots, cut into cubes
6 oz. onions, cut into cubes
1 bay leaf
1 small sprig thyme
5 oz. flour
2 oz. butter
½ oz. salt
1 oz. sugar
pinch pepper
10 lbs. raw tomatoes (or 4 qts. of same, mashed)
2 qts. white stock

Method
1. Fry the pork with the butter in a tall, thick-bottomed saucepan. When the
pork is nearly melted, add the carrots, onions and aromatics.
2. Cook and stir the vegetables, then add the flour, which should be allowed
to cook until it begins to brown.
3. Now put in the tomatoes and white stock, mix the whole mixture well, and
set to boil on an open fire.

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 T he M odern W orld of C ooking B egins

4. At this point add the seasoning and a crushed clove of garlic, cover the
saucepan, and place in a moderate oven, where it may cook for 1.5 hours.
5. At the end of this time the sauce should be passed through a sieve or
tammy, and it should boil while being stirred.
6. Finally, pour it into a tureen, and butter its surface to avoid the formation
of a skin.10

This is, essentially, Escoffier’s version of sauce tomate. The only difference
is that Escoffier sometimes used canned tomatoes. Don’t be shocked; the
use of canned tomatoes was pioneered in Escoffier’s kitchens. He explained,

Crushed tomato appeared on the market around 1892. But the idea of pro-
ducing it came in 1874–75, when I was chef at Le Petit Moulin Rouge. . . .
This purée could only be used for tomato sauce. I thought the taste could be
improved, and carried out tests that were entirely satisfactory. I . . . spoke of it
to several manufacturers, but no one was interested in the idea. Fifteen years
later I was able to convince a fruit and vegetable canning factory to produce
2,000 cans of crushed tomato that were immediately sent to the Savoy. They
were very much appreciated, and canned tomato sauce was launched. . . .
Later, the rate of production increased . . . spreading to Italy and America.
Today millions of cans of tomato sauce are sold.11

Who could imagine that the canned tomato sauce that is standard in pizza
joints and the most ordinary red sauce restaurants was the brainchild of the
master of elegant, white-tablecloth restaurants more than a century ago?
Julia Child was once asked about the legacy of Escoffier, given the
changes wrought by nouvelle cuisine and the increasing internationaliza-
tion of modern cooking. She replied, “I think when you read Escoffier’s
introductions . . . you see he had very contemporary ideas. When he was
writing about sauces like espagnole and demi-glace, he said that there would
probably be simpler ways of doing things in the future. I think his idea was
that cuisine has to adapt to the times.”12
Escoffier’s system was based on just a few mother sauces and a presum-
ably infinite number of daughter sauces created by adding garnishes or
seasonings to the basic mother sauces. Today’s cooks see sauces somewhat
differently—and Escoffier would probably appreciate an approach that is, at
once, more inclusive and systematic than was required a century ago.

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 CHAPTER 5

Perhaps, instead of just mothers and daughters, we should think of sauces

as part of large extended families, both in the sense of the usual collection
of aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and numerous grandparents and great-
grandparents endlessly receding into history and in the way that biologists
view taxonomies. A biological family is defined by its evolution from a
common ancestor as well as by its particular assemblage of physical charac-
teristics. It might be more constructive—and instructive—for us to consider
sauces in their familial contexts.

58
 II

O BRAVE NEW WORLD,

THAT HAS SUCH
SAUCES IN IT!
 6

TIME FOR A CHANGE

A s we have seen, Auguste Escoffier’s system of mother and daughter

sauces became the standard for understanding the otherwise chaotic
nature of, and connections between, sauces.
However, when we look at the hierarchy of sauces created by Escoffier
(and Antoine Carême before him), a few drawbacks present themselves.
First, we notice that almost all his mother sauces share a common feature:
they are thickened with flour. Hollandaise is the only exception. A larger
issue is that very few people today use sauces like those (even classically
trained French chefs employ a range of sauces that Escoffier could never
have imagined). Today’s kitchens are much more cosmopolitan than those
of a century ago.
It is true that French chefs have always explored the cuisines of other
cultures, but they generally adopted one ingredient or another, which they
then employed in a classically French manner. Something labeled “Floren-
tine” would not be recognizable to a citizen of Firenze; it would merely be a
French dish that contains spinach. A dish served à la japonaise would seem
even more bizarre in Tokyo (since it could be a salad containing artichokes,
mussels, potatoes, and/or truffles). The descriptor à la japonaise is also
applied to a bombe of peach ice cream, though the only remotely Japanese
thing about the latter is its tea-scented filling.
Another issue involved in the naming of sauces adds a complication.
Like the common names for plants and animals—which vary from place to
place and from time to time—we would prefer a more consistent system of

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nomenclature to make sense of them. In biology, a system of taxonomy was

created, using Latin binomials, to try to minimize confusion. That will be
impossible for sauces, but we can at least try to acknowledge the problem
and point out the differences between similar names—while revealing the
shared characteristics of related sauces. Take, for example, the following
recipe, from 1861, by Mrs. Beeton:

Historic Recipe: Remoulade, or French Salad-Dressing

Ingredients
4 eggs
½ Tbsp. made mustard
to taste salt and cayenne
3 Tbsp. olive oil
1 Tbsp. tarragon or plain vinegar

Method
1. Boil 3 eggs quite hard for about ¼ hour, put them into cold water, and
let them remain in it for a few minutes; strip off the shells, put the yolks
in a mortar, and pound them very smoothly; add to them, very gradually,
the mustard, seasoning, and vinegar, keeping all well stirred and rubbed
down with the back of a wooden spoon.
2. Put in the oil drop by drop, and when this is thoroughly mixed with the
other ingredients, add the yolk of a raw egg, and stir well, when it will be
ready for use.
3. This sauce should not be curdled; and to prevent this, the only way is to
mix a little of everything at a time, and not to cease stirring.
4. The quantities of oil and vinegar may be increased or diminished accord-
ing to taste, as many persons would prefer a smaller proportion of the
former ingredient.1

Her recipe does not resemble any rémoulade—or, for that matter, any
French salad dressing—we would recognize today. Compare, for example,
this recipe of Escoffier’s from 1903:

Historic Recipe: 130 Sauce Remoulade

To one pint of Mayonnaise (126) add one large tablespoon of prepared mus-
tard, another of gherkins, and yet another of chopped and pressed out capers,

62
 T ime for a C hange

one tablespoon of fine herbs, parsley, chervil, and tarragon, all chopped and
mixed, and a teaspoon of anchovy essence or anchovy paste.2

Escoffier’s sauce not only looks like ours but also builds on preexisting
sauces more efficiently, much as we would today. Forty years (and a taste for
modernity) made all the difference.
Today’s chefs—and many home cooks—think nothing of creating en-
tirely new sauces that might include chile pastes (like Korean gochujang
or Peruvian ají amarillo) or fish sauces (like Vietnamese pla ra or British
anchovy essence). We thicken our sauces not just with reduced cream or
starchy roux but also with ground nuts and seeds, or we purée exotic fruits
and vegetables. We routinely incorporate ingredients and techniques—from
every far-flung corner of the world, and every culture and every time pe-
riod—in ways never imagined by classically trained French chefs.
Our palates are not just more eclectic. We also have a desire for authen-
ticity in our food (even if we’re not entirely certain what “authentic” really
means). We don’t want a French dish that merely nods at another culture’s
culinary traditions; we want the real thing.
But Escoffier’s list of mother sauces seems inadequate for another reason.
We live in a more technological world, one in which we expect at least the
trappings of a scientific approach. Escoffier’s system reflects the thinking of
a different century, a different millennium. We may not always be logical in
our thinking about sauces, but we expect an approach that is more substan-
tial than four starches and one lonely emulsion.
While Escoffier created a number of bottled sauces for use in the home,
his system isn’t flexible enough to address our broadened tastes. Escoffier,
like Carême before him, had an architect’s desire to control the experience
of his clients. That kind of ego seems foolishly out of place when we think
nothing of having BBQ sauce, honey-mustard sauce, ketchup, piri piri, a
couple of soy sauces, sriracha, Tabasco, or Worcestershire on our tables—
maybe at the same time.
Alice May Brock, of Alice’s Restaurant fame, once said, “Tomatoes and
oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes
it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese;
garlic makes it good.” We’ve gone beyond such one-size-fits-all notions about
food and cooking (let alone the arrogance implied in reducing entire “ethnic”3

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cuisines to just a few ingredients or flavors). We know that cuisines have

evolved and continue to evolve in response to a host of different conditions:
immigration, wars, and economic and environmental changes. Even a subject
as narrow as “sauces” can reflect all those things. This makes any attempt to
make sense of it all both difficult and fascinating. How, for example, would
Escoffier’s taxonomy categorize the creations of molecular gastronomy?
Clearly a completely different approach is required. It must be flexible
enough to incorporate any sauce, from any part of the world that now ex-
ists, has ever existed, or is ever likely to exist. It must be able to address any
sauce, regardless of the unusualness of its ingredients. It must be logical and
able to function without having to build on historical sauce precedents—yet
able to seamlessly accommodate any of those preexisting sauces. While
we’re at it, we should take a look at the way different cultures have adopted
and adapted sauces from other places—or, in some cases, created them in-
dependently of one another utilizing similar techniques or methodologies.
In 1991, cookbook author James Peterson took on the challenge. His
book, Sauces: Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making, is monumental in
scope. Like Raymond Sokolov, he worked from the sauce maker’s perspec-
tive, but he went beyond Sokolov’s classical French sauces to incorporate
the wider range of sauces prepared by today’s cooks. Unfortunately—at least
as regards our preference for “simpler is better”—his taxonomy required at
least seventeen primary categories.
There may be other ways to accomplish the goal of devising a compre-
hensive taxonomy, but the simplest that comes to mind is based on the
physical structures of the sauces. To that end, let us consider five new
mother sauce categories (plus a hybrid category, “composites,” for sauces
that merge characteristics of two or more of the five primaries).
Appropriately enough, the first of the solutions to our self-imposed task
is in fact . . . solutions.

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 7

SOLUTIONS

A solution is the simplest form of sauce. It consists of either single

molecules or their constituent ions, distributed evenly throughout a
solvent. Ions are molecules that have broken into their elemental parts, like
the sodium and chlorine atoms that make up salt. When one heats a liquid
(solvent) or stirs it vigorously, dissolvable material (solute) is broken into
tinier and tinier bits. Eventually, those bits reach the point at which the mere
movement of the solvent’s molecules1 is enough to keep the bits of solute
from joining into clumps large enough for the force of gravity to overcome
the combination of molecular motion and surface tension and cause them to
settle out of solution.
Transparency provides an easy way to recognize a solution. If any par-
ticles larger than single molecules are floating around in a liquid, they tend to
scatter the light as it’s transmitted, so the liquid appears cloudy, translucent,
or even opaque. If it’s clear, it’s probably a solution.
Perhaps the simplest sauce is one found in nature: honey. Bees collect
nectar from flowers and fan it with their wings to reduce it by evaporation.
We do the same thing, using heat, to make maple syrup or to produce con-
centrated glace de viande from meat stock (a mixture of a soluble protein
and collagen, plus flavoring and coloring compounds, created by Maillard
reactions that occur when mirepoix, proteins, and fat are heated).
Some common methods for the production of flavorful solutions are
simple dissolving, infusion and maceration, steeping and simmering, filtra-
tion, distillation, and fermentation.

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The simplest solutions are brines and syrups made by stirring the solute
into a solvent (though adding heat can speed the process) or by reducing a
liquid that already contains the solute. In South America, the juice of sugar
cane is combined with orange zest, then reduced to a syrup (chancaca)
that serves as a topping for desserts. Sri Lankans tap toddy fishtail palms
(Caryota urens), then boil the sap into a syrup called kithul peni. It’s em-
ployed much as we use honey and maple syrup. If reduced further, it be-
comes the sticky brown sugar known as jaggery (hence the tree’s local name,
“jaggery palm”)—unless it’s fermented into palm wine first. Other syrups in
common use are derived from the sap of agave, birches, and sorghum.

Historic Recipe: Royal Sauce2

Take a terra cotta pot of new earth [a new pot] and put inside it two pounds
of good sugar, and four glassfuls of strong white vinegar, and twelve whole
cloves, and a piece of good cinnamon stick cut very finely. Then put it to the
fire over the coals and make it to boil so much that should thicken it and skim
it well, and watch that it does not get too thick, and a small amount of ground
nutmeg shall be good.3

Bartolomeo Scappi’s “Royal Sauce” was clearly a sweet-sour solution of

sugar and white vinegar, thickened only by reduction.
Vincotto is heavily reduced sweet must;4 it has been made in much the
same way since ancient times. The ancient Greeks had a word for it, itep-
sima (modern Greeks call it petimezi), while the Romans called it defrutum
or caroenum, depending on how sweet (how reduced) it was. These Roman
syrups were often flavored with spices, unlike sapa, which was unflavored
reduced must. Pekmez is a modern Turkish version (note the similarity with
petimezi), made from grapes, mulberries, or even sugar beets. It is sweeter
than nar ek isi (Turkish pomegranate “molasses”), which appears in dishes
from all over the eastern Mediterranean region. Reduced fruit juices are
sometimes used as is as sauces or combined with other liquids to make
more complex sauces. Vincotto can be mixed with wine vinegar and aged to
produce something akin to balsamic vinegar.
Infusing is merely soaking some material (usually the leaves or flowers
of an herb or other plant) in a hot liquid. Teas and tisanes are typical infu-
sions. Maceration is just like infusion but with larger particles sitting in a
cold liquid. One method for making raspberry vinegar, for example, is to

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soak berries in vinegar, then filter out the solids and dissolve some sugar
to bring out the berries’ flavor. Vincotto-based surrogates for balsamic
vinegar may be flavored with any number of fruits; citrus, figs, and berries
are common. Oxymel (a mixture of honey and vinegar) was once used to
preserve fruits, such as grapes, pears, and quinces, and functioned as a
sauce when serving them.
In some cases, the solution is just a by-product—the solids, infused
with the flavor of the solvent, are the goal. Some soy sauces are merely the
remnants of the production of seasoning pastes. Such fermented pastes, like
the tu’o’ng of Vietnam and Chinese doubanjiang (salted and ground broad
beans, soybeans, chiles), are the basis of many Asian sauces. Korean ssam-
jang is a mixture of two other pastes, doenjang (salted soy) and gochujang
(hot chiles, glutinous rice, fermented soybeans, and salt), plus brown sugar,
onions, scallions, garlic, and sesame oil. It accompanies grilled meats, just
as ketchup and mustard appear at an American cookout.
Steeping is another word for infusing. It differs from simmering in that
hot solvent is poured over the potential solute, whereas in simmering, long,
slow cooking at sub-boiling temperatures gradually dissolves components
that would otherwise be insoluble. The collagen in bones and tough meats,
for example, is dissolved by simmering to make stock. All of Auguste Es-
coffier’s mother sauces, other than hollandaise, begin with stock. He said,
“Stock is everything in cooking, at least in French cooking. Without it, noth-
ing can be done. If one’s stock is good, what remains of the work is easy; if,
on the other hand, it is bad or merely mediocre, it is quite hopeless to expect
anything approaching a satisfactory result.”5 If the stock (made from beef
and especially veal bones, which are incompletely calcified and so are much
richer in soluble collagen) is reduced even further, it becomes gelatin-rich
demi-glace, which can be used to thicken and enrich transparent sauces.
Classic sauce bordelaise, for example, employs reduced red Bordeaux wine,
plus melted demi-glace and bits of beef marrow, to enhance grilled steaks.
A macerated or infused liquid is often filtered to produce a clear solution.
Filtration involves passing a liquid containing some solids (generally ground
or chopped) through a material that allows the flavored liquid to pass but not
the solids. Coffee is commonly brewed and filtered.
Why mention a beverage that isn’t, itself, a sauce? Because it’s an ingredi-
ent in several sweet dessert sauces. Less obviously, the brew appears in savory

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sauces, such as southern red-eye gravy and Portuguese bife à café (steak in
coffee sauce that combines milky coffee with bay leaf, garlic, pepper, red wine,
and butter, thickened with corn starch). Less surprisingly, coffee is an ingredi-
ent in many barbecue sauces—less surprisingly because practically anything
can find, and has found, its way into recipes for barbecue.
Distillation first heats a liquid, converting it to a vapor, then cools the
resulting gas to condense its components. Fractional distillation involves
the use of heat to separate a mixture of solutions into their individual solu-
tions, each of which boils at a different temperature. Alcohol boils at a lower
temperature than water, making it possible to increase the concentration of
alcohol in a fermented liquid. Wine, which is a complex solution of alcohol,
water, and dozens of flavoring compounds, can be distilled to make brandy,
which is then aged in oak barrels that infuse it with new flavors. The distil-
lation of wine is not perfect (which would yield only ethyl alcohol), because
some flavoring compounds are volatile at temperatures close to that of alco-
hol—one reason why brandy, whiskey, and tequila don’t taste like vodka.
By the way, alcohol freezes at a much lower temperature than water does, so
potent apple jack can be “distilled” by freezing the water component of hard
cider and pouring off the higher-proof liquid that remains.
Wines made from rice instead of fruit (technically, beers without carbon-
ation) are essential to the cooking of several Asian regions.
The Japanese have mirin, which is basically a type of seasoned cooking
sake with reduced alcohol and elevated sugar. One mirin-based sauce, nikiri
mirin, is ten parts soy sauce, two parts dashi (an umami-rich stock made
from dried skipjack flakes and kombu seaweed),6 and one part each of mirin
and sake. A shortcut version uses only four parts tamari to one of mirin. Ei-
ther way, it is reduced (ni-kiru is Japanese for “boil down”) to form a glaze
applied to fish that’s about to be served. A similar sauce, nitsume, substitutes
a reduced gelatinous broth made from conger eel for the dashi and sugar for
the sake. It is only used on types of sushi that incorporate cooked seafood,
such as eel, octopus, or shrimp.
Japanese glazed dishes, known as teriyaki, are coated with a reduced mix-
ture of mirin (or sake), plus soy sauce and sugar. In the United States, ready-
made bottles of teriyaki sauce are sold—though the Japanese don’t consider
teriyaki a sauce, and even if they did, they certainly wouldn’t include sesame
oil and garlic in its formulation.

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Mirin is also the base for ponzu dipping sauce. It’s simmered with rice
vinegar and the basic ingredients for dashi—kombu seaweed and flakes
of katsuobushi (fermented, dried, and smoked skipjack tuna, Katsuwonus
pelamis)—then soured with citrus juice. That juice could come from any
of the following citrus fruits: lemon; daidai or citrus and daidai; kabosu,
C. sphaerocarpa; sudachi, C. sudachi; or yuzu, C. junos.
The best-known Chinese wine is huangjiu, made in Shaoxing in Zhen-
jiang province. It comes in three basic forms: yuanhong, jiafan, and shan-
niang, with yuanhong being the driest and shanniang the sweetest. All are
long aged in earthenware jars and have a nutty, sherry-like taste. Huangjiu
is usually seen in the West as Shaoxing rice cooking wine, which—like the

Shaoxing rice (cooking) wine. Source: Gary Allen

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so-called cooking wines we find in our grocery stores—has salt added to dis-
courage people from drinking it (and to comply with laws that control sales
of alcoholic beverages). Drunken chicken, a classic Shaoxing dish, is made
by poaching the bird with ginger and scallion, then soaking it overnight
in the local rice wine. It’s cut up and served cold with a sauce made of the
poaching and marinating liquids.
Korean rice wine, cheongju or mirim, is similar to Japanese mirin in that
it has some residual sweetness (in some cases, sugar or corn syrup is added).
Either one can be used in Korean dishes. Mihyang marinade, which is avail-
able ready-made, is cheongju and vinegar, sweetened with sugar or corn
syrup. It’s usually employed to flavor pork dishes. Koreans also sweeten
their dishes with plum syrup (maesil cheong), made by aging green plums in
sugar. The hygroscopic sugar gradually draws moisture and flavorings from
the fruit, which is then strained for use.
Perhaps the most unexpected source of solutions—but most globally
widespread—is fermentation. We’re talking about sauces, not just alcohol
(even if alcohol is sometimes referred to, colloquially, as “the sauce”). Alco-
hol, in various forms, is a component of many sauces, such as Scottish whis-
key sauce (flamed whiskey, reduced cream, salt, and pepper) or Italian penne
alla vodka (also based on heavy cream but colored by tomato purée with
onions and garlic that have been sautéed in butter). Wines (red, white, Ma-
deira, sherry), in combination with other ingredients, provide the foundation
of the sauces for countless classic dishes—from boeuf bourguignon to coq au
vin—though red barbera wine is, all by itself, a sauce for pasta in Piemonte.
Let’s focus, instead, on nonalcoholic fermentation and its products.
When minute organisms (mostly yeasts, molds, and bacteria) digest solid
nutrients in a liquid environment, they extract their soluble components
and, at the same time, create many new compounds that were not pres-
ent in the original solids. Brine is often the liquid employed because it is
inhospitable to dangerous bacteria but encourages the growth of desirable
species. The ancient Romans’ garum and soy sauce are classic brine-based
fermented solutions (that also employ enzymatic hydrolysis). Vinegar is
another familiar example, though it’s fermented without salt.
Before we dive into any of these solutions, let’s examine a key set of
ingredients that many sauces have in common: a base mixture of aromatic
vegetables. They are generally cooked slowly in fat until they have browned

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and developed complex flavors through caramelization and/or Maillard

reactions. A liquid is added to them to extract as much soluble flavor and
color as possible. The solids are strained out, having added depth of flavor
and aroma in solution. Cuisines that utilize aromatics in this way tend not to
employ sauces made from brined soluble proteins (such as soy sauce or the
fish sauces of Southeast Asia). Generally, aromatics are not employed there
because the fermented sauces provide more than enough umami and other
flavors on their own.
In French cooking, the aromatic of choice is mirepoix: two parts onion and
one part each of carrots and celery. White mirepoix substitutes leeks for the
carrots when a light-colored sauce is desired. In Cajun recipes, the aromatic
base is called “trinity”: it’s still mirepoix but substitutes green pepper for the
carrots. Battuto or sofritto (also known as “holy trinity”) is the Italian take
on mirepoix, adding garlic and sometimes cured pork products—pancetta or
prosciutto. The Spanish version, sofrito, replaces the green peppers with red
and the carrots with tomatoes—and Catalonian sofrito adds garlic. Filipinos
have adopted a form of sofrito that is almost identical to that of Spain, but they
call it ginisá. Puerto Rican sofrito is based on several sweet peppers (ajices
dulces, cubanelles, red bell peppers), plus cilantro and culantro (Eryngium
foetidum), garlic, onions, and tomatoes. Central American sofrito, known as
hogao, features cumin, garlic, onions, scallions, and tomatoes (plus salt and
pepper), slowly cooked to extract all their flavors—or just purchased ready-
made in a bottle. Nigerian cooks have their holy trinity as well, but theirs
consists of hot chiles, red onions, and tomatoes, generally cooked in palm
oil. The German take on mirepoix, suppengruen (literally, “soup greens”),
substitutes leeks for the onions and celeriac for the celery.
In the Caribbean, lard replaces the oil, and it may be colored with an-
natto. The annatto imparts an orange color to the oil, mimicking the reddish
palm oil that is the base of the West African equivalent of sofrito (an aromatic
combination that usually includes onion, peppers, and tomato).
In Latin American countries, various sofritos take the place of mirepoix.
They might include an assortment of chiles plus cilantro and culantro, as in
Puerto Rico. Mexican sofrito might contain habanero chiles. The Cuban ver-
sion, far less spicy, omits the chiles and replaces the herbs with bay leaves,
cumin, green peppers, and oregano. When cooking beans, Cubans may add
some form of cured pork (chorizo, ham, or salt pork) to their sofrito. That’s

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hardly a surprise; the combination of pork and beans is almost universal—at

least where pork is not a forbidden part of the diet!
Dissolving the compounds produced by cooking aromatics in a liquid
is an excellent way of extracting their flavors and nutrients. What we call
“flavor” is actually our brain’s attempt to merge taste and scent into a single
recognizable experience. Water may be the “universal solvent”—and it is
the most common solvent in cooking—but alcohol and some lipids (oils) are
especially effective at grabbing molecules that aren’t water soluble.7

Szechuan hot oil. This one dissolves capsaicin and

spices in soy oil. Source: Gary Allen

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Chinese hot oil is a non-water-based example. Used as a dip or for finish-

ing the sauce in stir-fried dishes, it is made by heating crushed red chiles
(and sometimes Sichuan peppercorns) in oil. It is sometimes called “ma la
oil” because the Sichuan peppercorns’ hydroxy-alpha sanshool causes hot
and numbing sensations (“ma” and “la,” respectively). Capsaicin, the hot
component of chiles, doesn’t dissolve easily in water but will readily dis-
perse in oil. The oil takes on capsaicin’s heat and the pigment’s (capsanthin)
red coloration but remains transparent. Countless variations of this basic
sauce are produced in Chinese kitchens, possibly including any number of
flavoring ingredients, such as black cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, fennel,
garlic, or ginger. Japan bases a similar chile-infused oil on sesame oil, and
Italian olio di peperoncino is virtually the same thing as these hot oils (minus,
of course, the Asian spices), except that olive oil replaces the sesame oil.
Vietnamese cooks make two similar oils that do not include hot chiles as
dips or as sauces for noodles or rice. Hanh la phi is prepared by cooking
scallions in oil, then straining out the solids. Toi phi dau is exactly the same
but replaces the scallions with garlic. It’s traditionally sprinkled over soups,
especially those made with seafood.
In many Asian dishes, especially those from China, sesame oil is a key com-
ponent. It burns easily, so it is not used for stir-frying but is added as a finishing
sauce. This dark sesame oil is pressed from seeds that have first been toasted,
lending a strong nutty taste that doesn’t exist in the light, untoasted sesame oil
one might find in a health food store. A similar fragrant finishing oil—aromatic
Korean deulgireum perilla (Perilla frutescens)—is pressed from toasted seeds.
Oil appears on tables where Mediterranean foods predominate, often
replacing butter as a lubricant for dry bread. It is sometimes flavored with
garlic or garnished with herbs, plus black pepper or, further east, ground
sumac or za’atar (a blend of sesame seeds and thyme-like herbs). It’s the first
“sauce” encountered in one’s meal.
Other fats serve as sauces (or as components of other sauces). We’ll be
looking at vinaigrettes later, but a common Western lipid sauce is melted
butter—though merely melted butter is not a proper solution. The presence
of milk solids and an aqueous component disqualifies it. However, clarified
butter is . . . how shall I say it . . . clear. If heated to the point at which the
milk solids brown before the butter is clarified, it becomes the nutty and
aromatic beurre noisette, or brown butter.

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Filipinos cook thick coconut milk, causing its oil to separate, and con-
tinue cooking until any solids begin to brown—just as in brown butter. Since
coconut milk contains more sugar than the dairy milk used to make butter,
the resulting latik is more syrupy-sweet than beurre noisette and serves as a
caramel-like sauce for desserts.
In Morocco, savory herbs are heated in butter before clarification, and
the result is placed in pots to age (sometimes for decades) to make smen.
The aging process creates a cheese-like pungency that is a far cry from the
relatively neutral cooking fat (ghee) used in India. The Ethiopians’ take on
flavored ghee is niter kibbeh. They simmer chopped fresh garlic, ginger
root, and onion in the melted butter and season it with cardamom, cin-
namon, clove, fenugreek, nutmeg, and turmeric. Once the spicy clarified
butter is strained into jars, it becomes a staple ingredient in classic Ethio-
pian dishes like doro wat. Niter kibbeh stores well, but it’s not intentionally
aged like smen.
Some of the world’s oldest sauces were solutions. Mesopotamian siqqu
and Roman garum are little more than fermented fish proteins dissolved in
strong salty brine. To make them, merely toss a lot of small fish or scraps of

Prepared ghee and “vegetable ghee” (hydrogenated oil). Source: Gary Allen

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larger fish into a vat with about five times their volume of salt. Weigh it down
and ignore it for a few months (preferably from a comfortable location, safely
upwind). Strain the resulting liquid, and there you have it. Archaeologists
have unearthed garum “factories” all around the Mediterranean. It’s much
the same as the fish sauces of Asia today (such as Thai tiparos or Vietnamese
nuóc mám). Sauces derived from fermented seafood are almost as ubiqui-
tous as those based on soy.
Iran has a southern coastline, and access to the sea means access to both
fish and salt, so it’s only natural that Iranians produce a condiment like ma-
hyawa. Steeping salted anchovies along with typical local spices (the seeds
of coriander, cumin, fennel, and mustard) creates the clear brown, salty,
umami-rich liquid. It adds a spritz of tanginess to typical Persian flatbreads
like regag (a thin flatbread prepared with batter, like a crepe, but cooked
until light brown and crisp).
Bagoong dilis (also known as bagoong bolinaw, bagoong gurayan, and
bagoong monaman) is a Filipino fermented anchovy paste. Anchovies, of
course, are not the only small seafood that can be harvested in massive
quantities, salted, fermented, and turned into protein-rich sauces. In the
Philippines, the term patís refers to an entire class of similar sauces that
are the by-product of bagoong making. They can be subdivided into two
main categories: bagoong isdâ and bagoong alamáng (the former made
from finfish, the latter from crustaceans such as krill or shrimp). There are
literally dozens of bagoong varieties, depending on the region where they’re
produced, the type of seafood that is fermented, and the ratio of salt to sea-
food employed. Bagoong makers are not limited to finfish and crustaceans;
mollusks (clams and oysters) also find their way into brine-filled ceramic
jars. Patís is similar to salty umami sauces from China (hom ha and yeesu),
Indonesia (ketjap-ikan), Japan (ikanago-shoyu, ishiru, shottsuru), Laos
(nam pha), and Vietnam (nuóc mám). Nuóc mám, when combined with
lime juice and hot chile peppers, becomes the ubiquitous nuóc chám dip-
ping sauce. Another name, nuóc mám pha, refers to nuóc chám mixed with
vinegar and sweetened with sugar (palm sugar or coconut water replaces
sugar in the southern parts of the country). The Thai version of nuóc chám
is called phrik nam pla.
Budu is a southern Thai and Malaysian fish sauce made from anchovies,
while Thai pla ra is usually made from freshwater striped snakehead fish

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(Channa striata). Pla ra is more sour than budu because it goes through a
second fermentation in combination with rice bran and/or ground rice. Its
characteristic tang is created by a specific lactobacillus (Pediococcus halophilus;
the species name actually means “salt-loving”) that feeds on the rice starches.
Thais often add lime juice or tamarind to accent pla ra’s sourness. Budu gets
some of its dark color from gula kabung (palm sugar) and tamarind. Pla ra is
rather like the ancient Romans’ oxygarum, a mixture of fish sauce and vinegar.
The Romans sweetened garum by mixing the fish sauce with wine (to make
oenogarum) or, to make it even sweeter, with honey (meligarum). The Ko-
rean equivalents are mulchi aecjeot (the liquid from fermented anchovies) and
kkanari aecjeot (made from sand lance, Ammodytes spp.).
Colaturi di alici,8 an anchovy sauce from Campania, may have come
down to us directly from Roman garum and liquamen, but another descen-
dant is much more familiar: Worcestershire sauce.
In the 1830s, Lea & Perrins first attempted to create a seasoning liquid
something like what colonials had experienced in the Indian subcontinent.
They failed, but their vile experiment was left in a barrel in the basement
and forgotten for a couple of years—until a surprised taster discovered what
has since become one of the world’s best-known condiments. It is based on
fermented anchovies, of course, but contains dozens of other ingredients,
among them vinegars and tamarind extract, so its salty flavor-enhancing tang
serves Westerners just as pla ra does Thais. Anchovy essence—anchovies
steeped in oil and a few spices—is a simpler umami bomb.
The different styles of Japanese fish sauces are regional variations on
generic salty fermented sauces, collectively known as hishia (or gyosho; gyo
just means “fish”). Most are made from hatahata, a type of sand fish (Arc-
toscopus japonicus), but ishiru is made from sardines. The best pale, salty
shottsuru is aged for ten years. These sauces are sometimes called uoshoyu
(fish soy sauce) and ikanago-shoyu (soy sauce from sand eels, Ammodytes
personatus Girard), revealing the fact that they add salt and umami to dishes
in the same way that soy-based sauces do.
Soy sauce is made in similar fashion, but soybeans and/or wheat provide
the protein. These fermented sauces don’t begin as solutions, but after long
aging, the solids settle out, leaving transparent (but darkly colored) solu-
tions. The fermentation process produces hundreds of flavor components,
including a little alcohol. Worcestershire sauce is prepared in a similar

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fashion but contains several other flavoring ingredients—again, long aging

deposits any suspended particles at the bottom of the barrels (or, today, gi-
ant tanks). Some soy sauces—Korean soy sauce, ganjang, for example—are
merely the by-products of producing fermented seasoning pastes.
Cheap soy sauce is not made by traditional fermentation; soy protein is
hydrolyzed with acids, after which sugars (often corn syrup), salt, flavorings,
and artificial color (usually made from soluble caramel) are added. That
kind of soy sauce lacks the distinctive flavors and aromas of the hundreds of
varieties of traditional sauces.
The two primary Chinese versions are thin (or light) soy, which is the
saltier of the two—not to be confused with western “lite” soy sauce, which
has reduced sodium content—and dark (or black) soy, which is sweetened
and colored with molasses. Japanese soy (shoyu) tends to use more wheat
in its brewing; it’s milder, lighter in color, and has a little more alcohol.
The most common of the lighter types is usukuchi; the darker is koikuchi.
Other Japanese soy sauces include tamari (which is fermented from very
little wheat, relative to its soybean content) and shiro (Japanese for “white”),
whose ingredient ratio is the reverse of tamari’s.
Korean soy sauce, ganjang, is similar in flavor to Japanese-style sauces.
Indonesian soy sauces are called kecap (which has given us our word
“ketchup”)—though the term refers to any Indonesian fermented sauce. Like
Chinese dark soy, kecap manis is a thick, dark liquid, but it is sweetened with
jaggery (palm sugar). Thai sweet soy is similar; it’s very thick and tastes like
a very savory version of molasses. These thick sauces are used both as an
ingredient in cooking and as a condiment (dipping sauce) at the table. Kecap
asin, made from black beans, is saltier than other Indonesian soys.

Perhaps the most unusual take on “soy sauce” is Singapore’s angmo daoiu,
which is Southern Min for “white”—literally “redhaired man’s soy sauce”
(angmo is a racial epithet denigrating Caucasians). Angmo daoiu is, in fact a
name for Worcestershire sauce! A more ethnically neutral term—la jiangyou
(“spicy soy sauce”)—is preferred in Shanghai.9

Soy sauce is the basis of countless sauces throughout the cuisines of

East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific. It’s often combined with other
solutions—such as mirin (sweet rice wine) and dissolved sugar or honey for
Japanese teriyaki. Tentsuyu, a dipping sauce that accompanies tempura in

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Japan, combines three solutions: soy sauce, rice wine (either mirin or sake),
and dashi (stock made from kombu seaweed and dried bonito flakes).

Recipe: Red Cooking

Ingredients
1 qt. water
½ cup Shaoxing rice wine
3 Tbsp. dark soy
3 Tbsp. sugar

Method
1. Combine all ingredients and bring to a boil.
2. Add browned meat, lower heat, cover, and simmer until tender and
deeply colored.
Note: The flavor of this braising liquid can be modified by adding ginger,
star anise, or five spice powder.10
The cook will always save the remaining gravy [sauce], add water and
seasoning to it, and use it to cook other foods, removing some of that
sauce in turn to be used elsewhere. The oftener it is used, the richer and
more fully flavored the sauce becomes. A sauce of this sort can be kept
going almost indefinitely, sometimes even for generations. The Chinese
call such a preparation a master sauce.11

When bacteria consume an alcohol, vinegar is produced (winemakers go

to elaborate lengths to prevent fruit flies from contaminating the fermenting
juice with Acetobacter aceti). The alcohol can come from any source, each of
which produces a vinegar with a different flavor and degree of acidity.
Virtually any type of fruit can be fermented (to produce red and white
wines, champagne, sherry, sake, and hard cider), and the alcohol can be
bacterially fermented to produce vinegar. The fruit’s character affects the re-
sulting vinegar’s flavor and acidity. Examples include apples and pears (for
cider vinegars); cherries (in Modena, Italy, cherry vinegar is aged in barrels
made of cherry wood, yielding a dark balsamic-like vinegar); jujubes (a type
of date, Ziziphus jujuba, for Chinese zaocu); persimmons (for South Korean
gam sikcho); pineapples (for vinaigre de piña, ameliorated with brown sugar
and used primarily in Central America); and quinces. For familiar raspberry
vinegar (and similar vinegars made with black currants, blackberries, blue-

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berries, loganberries, and strawberries), the fruit is macerated in some other

vinegar, and then filtered out. Most of these vinegars are used as sauces, as
they are, or as components of vinaigrettes (but then, of course, they are no
longer solutions; they’re emulsions).
Coconut water or sap can be fermented (after adding sugar from another
source) and the resulting brew inoculated with a mass of bacteria, called
a “mother,” to produce vinegar. However, the much sweeter sap of date
palms is a more productive method in the tropics (wine made from date
palm sap is popular all over Africa and in the Philippines). Not surprisingly,
dates have been used for that purpose in the Middle East from the beginning
of recorded history. Since most of that region is Islamic today, date vinegar
is much more prevalent there than date alcohol.
Classic balsamic vinegar, from Modena, is slowly aged in a series of bar-
rels made of different aromatic woods, so that it gradually takes on all their
flavors and thickens due to evaporation. This vinegar can be used as a sauce
in its own right (for example, when balsamic vinegar is reduced to a thick
syrup) or combined in various ways to yield new sauces.
Chinese cooks have several different vinegars in their culinary arsenal.
Unlike most European vinegars, they’re fermented from grain alcohols—
most often rice—not fruit wines. Proceeding from light to dark, they are
white rice vinegar, red rice vinegar, tianjin duliu vinegar, and black rice
vinegar. The white version is the sourest (it has the highest acetic acid
content) but still milder than Western white vinegars, most of which are
produced synthetically through the distillation of wood by-products. It is
generally a cooking ingredient, such as in sweet-and-sour dishes (where its
acidity and absence of color are desired). White vinegar is also available in
a wide range of ready-made flavored versions, with added cloves, ginger,
orange peel, or sugar. Red rice vinegar (Shanxi aged vinegar) is brewed
from red yeast fungus (Monascus purpureus) and a mixture of grains. It
is a little smoky and salty and may be sweetened—and thickened—with
sorghum syrup, though it is not as sweet as black vinegar. It can be brewed
from any number of grains, such as barley, rice bran, or sorghum, with
added salt and spices. It’s frequently used as a dipping sauce for dim sum,
combining three of the basic tastes of salty, sweet, and sour. Shanxi vinegar,
also known as “extra aged vinegar,” is a valuable product. Consequently,
as with the rich balsamic vinegar of Modena, it is frequently imitated using

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entirely synthetic ingredients (and heavily doctored with the preservative

sodium benzoate). As a general warning, if it’s not expensive and not spe-
cifically labeled “preservative-free,” it’s probably a knockoff. Tianjin duliu
“mature” vinegar is made from wheat and rice, plus peas and sorghum,
from a recipe that dates to the fourteenth century. Like Shanxi, tianjin
duliu has been widely imitated by bogus vinegars (at least fifty factories in
the Tianjin neighborhood have been investigated by Chinese authorities).
It’s mild, not too acidic, and a little sweet—making it suitable for use as a
dipping sauce. Black vinegar or brown rice vinegar (Chinkiang or Zhen-
jiang vinegar) can be made from sweet glutinous rice, millet, or even sor-
ghum—but not, as one of its names might suggest, brown rice. Sometimes
the rice is toasted, giving the vinegar a slightly smoky taste. Black vinegar
is often compared with balsamic vinegar because of its richness. It’s the
thickest, sweetest, and least acidic; yet it has the most complex flavor of
the Chinese vinegars (though it’s not as sweet as the best balsamics). It’s
a complete sauce in itself, though it may be mixed with hot chile oil and
chopped ginger, scallions, or garlic. Black vinegar is also used in cooking
because Chinese sauces try to balance all the basic tastes, allowing a single
dish—plus rice or noodles, of course—to provide a complete meal.
Japanese vinegars are even milder (that is, less acetic) than Chinese vin-
egars, though they’re also made primarily from rice. There are three basic
forms: plain rice vinegar (komezu), seasoned rice vinegar (awasezu), and
black vinegar (kurozu). Unlike the Chinese versions, they are cooking in-
gredients, not sauces in their own right. Some Japanese vinegar is marketed
as “seasoned”; it contains sake, salt, and sugar. Still other rice vinegars are
made in Korea and Vietnam. Korean vinegar (ssal-sikcho) and Vietnamese
vinegars (giấm gạo) are likewise used in cooking only.
However, in the Philippines—where there is a pronounced interest
in sour flavors—vinegar (suka) is the basis of many dipping sauces, col-
lectively known as sawsawan. Sugar is the source of alcohol used to make
Filipinos’ cane vinegar. Macerating a virtual salad of raw chile peppers,
garlic, and red onions, together with some fried garlic, in cane vinegar
yields sukang maanghang, a dipping sauce and all-purpose condiment.
A light brown vinegar (sukang iloko), combined with dissolved salt and
sugar and garnished with chopped red onion and garlic, might be served
beside grilled pork belly. Filipinos employ sour flavors besides that of

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Authentic Shanxi vinegar (note the absence of additives, pigment, or preservatives).
Source: Gary Allen
 CHAPTER 7

vinegar as well. The juice of citrus fruits—lemon-like calamondins (also

known as kalamansi, a lime-like hybrid of mandarin orange and kumquat,
Fortunella japonica) and key limes (dayaps)—and tamarinds lends acidity,
either alone or in combination with vinegar.
Sweeteners have often been employed to temper the sour taste of vinegar.
Italian agrodolce is a general term for such sweet-and-sour sauces (in French,
it’s aigre-doux). The Romans made several variations that incorporated
honey and vinegar: laser sauces, with different assortments of herbs and
spices, plus liquamen; oxyporium, similar, but sometimes without liqua-
men; and hypotrimma, like laser sauces but with added dried fruits, oil, and
wine. Modern sweet-and-sour sauces include those made with gastriques
(caramelized sugar diluted with vinegar and sometimes fruit juices). A clas-
sic example is the sauce for canard à l’orange (though some recipes call for
thickening with starch—like Chinese restaurant sweet-and-sour sauce—
which would make the sauce a gel rather than a solution). German rotkohl
(red cabbage) is usually cooked in a sugar-vinegar solution, which provides
flavor and preserves the cabbage’s red color.12
Japanese umeboshi—very sour apricots (erroneously called “plums”)—
are generally preserved in salt. The salt draws liquid from the fruit, and the
aromatic brine that accumulates becomes a condiment of its own. It contains
citric acid, but even without acetic acid, it’s so sour that it is colloquially
known as umezu (“ume vinegar”). Ponzu sauce actually does contain some
rice vinegar (along with mirin and a dose of umami from flakes of dried
tuna and kombu, leathery sheets of dried kelp). Vinegar doesn’t provide
all of ponzu’s acidic punch, however; the juices of several citrus fruits add
their unique tanginess: Nanshô-daidai, an orange-colored hybrid sour or-
ange (Citrus × aurantium); green kabasu (Citrus sphaerocarpa Tanaka);
tangerine-­like sudadachi ichandrin (Citrus sudadchi); and yet another hy-
brid, yuzu (Citrus ichangensis × Citrus reticulata). Ponzu is often combined
with soy sauce; that ponzu shoyu serves as a dipping condiment and as a
basting liquid in the grilling of meat or fish.
Indian cuisines use a number of sour fruits in their sauces, though vin-
daloos are more likely to contain vinegar. That’s because these sauces origi-
nated in Goa, which had been colonized by the Portuguese for nearly half
a millennium, so wine and wine vinegar were known in Goan kitchens. A
few indigenous vinegars existed in India before the colonial period, but they

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were mostly derived from fermented cane sugar, not wine. Catholic Goans
tended to prefer vinegar, while Hindus in Goa and elsewhere acidulated
their sauces with the sour juice of kokam berries (Garcinia indica). Indians
similarly incorporated the sour juice of nimbu (a generic term for both limes
and lemons) and imli (tamarind pulp).
Fried foods call for something astringent to render their fattiness less
cloying, and vinegar serves the purpose well. British fish-and-chips is classi-
cally served with a splash of malt vinegar. “Malt vinegar” is a modern name
for what was once known as alegar, a sour acetic liquid made from not wine
but beer. Chinese dumplings, especially the fried ones, are often served with
a dipping sauce made of soy sauce, ginger, and black vinegar (Chinkiang
vinegar or Zhenjiang aromatic vinegar).
Filipinos also love fried foods and have a variety of dipping sauces, many
containing vinegar (again, thanks to European colonial influence), but also
tamarind and the juices of a number of sour citrus fruits: calamondins,
lemons, and limes. The people of the Philippines are truly cosmopolitan
in their gastronomy: we’ve already mentioned the Iberian connection, but
the Chinese influence is represented by soy sauce, while Southeast Asians
brought in fish sauce. One can find traces of virtually all these cuisines in a
single dipping sauce.
One of the simplest by-product sauces is the vinegar in which hot pep-
pers are packed. In Texas and some other southern states, a bottle of pickled
hot peppers is kept on the table, and a few drops (or more) of the vinegar in
which they sit gets sprinkled on cooked greens, such as collards, mustard
greens, or turnip tops. When the level in the bottle gets low, more vinegar is
added, and the bottle just keeps making more “pepper sauce.”
Sometimes the cooking process creates its own solution-based sauce.
When flan is cooked, the liquid that seeps out of the custard combines
with caramelized sugar to create the dessert’s own sauce. Au jus, a more
savory example, is simply the intercellular fluid that comes out of meat as
it roasts, picking up salts and tasty soluble compounds produced by Mail-
lard reactions on the meat’s surface along the way.13 The browned deposit
at the bottom of that pan is known as suc. It is usually enhanced by deglaz-
ing the pan with stock, wine, or vinegar and sometimes adding aromatics,
like mirepoix—straining them out before serving. Most au jus sauces are
not thickened with flour (otherwise they’d be gravy). If thickened with a

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starch that yields a clear sauce, such as arrowroot or corn starch, the sauce
is known as jus lié.
Au jus is commonly served with the roasts that create them—prime rib
being a classic example—but the sauce has more plebeian uses as well. A
French dip, for example, is just a roast beef sandwich with a side of au jus
for . . . ummm . . . dipping. The sandwich has nothing to do with France,
other than its being served on a baguette. Likewise, Chicagoans’ Italian beef
has only tangential ties to Italy (it was supposedly invented in the stockyards
by Italian immigrant laborers). It’s a roast beef sandwich on Italian bread,
sometimes garnished with Italian mixed pickles (giardiniera) or sautéed
sweet peppers, then dipped—once, twice, or many times—in the broth
in which the beef was cooked. The resulting sandwiches are described as
“dipped,” “juicy,” or “soaked,” respectively. There is even a simple ver-
sion, called “gravy bread,” that omits the beef (but it’s not for vegetarians,
who might be viewed suspiciously in the carnivorous Windy City). It’s just
a jus-sodden mass of bread with the same garnishes as an Italian beef. As
one person said, after tasting gravy bread for the first time, “I appreciate a
food that appeals to multiple generations: pre-tooth babies and post-tooth
seniors. . . . I like a food that melts in my mouth, but I really prefer if it waits
until it’s actually in my mouth.”14
Because of solutions’ ability to extract flavor (and the ease with which
they can be reduced, concentrating their flavors to an essence), they often
form the basis for other sauces. If those others are “mother sauces,” then
solutions could well be considered the “grandmother sauces.”

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SUSPENSIONS

S uspensions differ from solutions primarily in the size of the particles dis-
persed in the liquid. Rather than individual molecules or ions, tiny bits
of matter are suspended in the liquid portion of the sauce. Fruit or vegetable
purées are typical suspensions. Unlike solutions, suspensions range from
slightly cloudy to translucent to opaque—due to light scattering.
Most hot sauces, like Tabasco, are suspensions (minuscule fragments
of chile peppers floating in a vinegary medium). Straining doesn’t remove
all of the pepper bits, which is why the sauce is cloudy, not transparent.
Tabasco’s newer chipotle- and habanero-based sauces contain so much
suspended matter that they’re opaque.
Unlike solutions’ molecules, suspensions’ larger particles tend to sepa-
rate out of the sauce. Generally heavier than the liquid, they usually sink to
the bottom (or, when a coulis1—a strained purée of fruit, such as raspber-
ries—is left too long on the plate, a small ring forms as the suspending liquid
gradually oozes from the mound of solids). Such sauces need to be shaken to
redistribute the solids in the liquid. If, however, their size is very small—as
in Tabasco—the particles may stay in suspension just by Brownian motion,
being bumped around by the molecular motion of their liquid. The puréed
fermented peppers in Tabasco are combined with vinegar, then vigorously
mixed for twenty-eight days to reduce the particles to a size small enough
to stay in suspension. No thickening ingredients are required to prevent the
sauce from separating.

85
Tabasco sauce, viewed through a microscope. The dark area, top left, is a fragment of
tabasco pepper. Individual cell walls can be seen in the little flap at the bottom of the
fragment and in the small rectangle of skin in the center of the image. The clear white
area is a solution of salt in vinegar. Source: Gary Allen
 S uspensions

Many other commercial suspension-type sauces avoid separation of

solid and liquid portions by adding emulsifying agents, which we’ll dis-
cuss a little later.
Literally thousands of hot sauces are manufactured commercially around
the world—and almost all of them qualify as suspensions. One of the most
popular, in recent years, is sriracha. While Tabasco has been produced on
Louisiana’s Avery Island since the Civil War, sriracha has only been around
since the 1930s. Sriracha-like sauces were originally made in Thailand for
Burmese customers who had been making similar sauces at home for some
time. Today it is sold under a number of brand names, but the largest sup-
plier is Huy Fong Foods.2 The familiar “rooster sauce” is a finely ground
paste of red jalapeño peppers and garlic, suspended in a solution of salt,
sugar, and white vinegar. David Tran, its creator, began making hot sauces
in Los Angeles’s Chinatown in 1975.3 Before hitting on the recipe for sri-
racha, he produced chili garlic paste, sambal badjak (a brown condiment
made of galangal, garlic, hot peppers, nutmeg, palm sugar, shrimp paste,
shallots, and tamarind), sambal oelek (like a thicker, unsweetened version of
sriracha), and another pepper sauce he called Sa-te.
Sa-te is his own name for Chinese shacha, a gritty paste of chile, garlic,
shallots, soybean oil, and two kinds of seafood: brill (a flounder-like fish,
Scophthalmus rhombus) and pungent dried shrimp. Shacha is a common
ingredient in Chinese kitchens, not usually employed as a condiment itself.
It does enliven dips to accompany Mongolian hot pots—when it’s likely to
be combined with Chinkiang black vinegar, more hot peppers, soy, and a
mixture of chopped cilantro, garlic, and scallions.
Filipinos, whose diets often consist of fatty meats (especially pork)
or fried foods (such as their egg-roll-like lumpia) need something to cut
through all that fat. They love sour flavors, so they have created a wide range
of dipping sauces, most of which are acidic solutions garnished with floating
solids. The liquid varies; it could be one of the many vinegars they produce
or citrus juices (like lemon, lime, or kalamansi). The seasoning or garnishes
might include all or some of the following: black pepper, an assortment
of minced hot chiles (both fresh and dried), cucumber, garlic, and onion
or scallion. Filipino cooking is a prototypical fusion cuisine, so these dips
might be seasoned with salt, soy sauce, or a Southeast Asian fish sauce. The
following sauce is uncooked but requires aging for its flavors to develop:

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Recipe: Sari Sari Sauce

Ingredients
1 whole fresh coriander plant, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
1–5 (to taste) hot chiles, finely chopped
3 Tbsp. fish sauce (such as patís)
3 Tbsp. light (not “lite”) soy sauce
1 Tbsp. white wine vinegar or kalamansi*
3 black pepper corns, cracked
* If kalamansi juice, fresh or bottled, is unavailable, substitute lime juice.

Method
1. Combine all ingredients in a jar. Cover.
2. Allow to macerate for at least a week before using.

Pili-pili sauce, from central Africa, contains ground chiles, garlic, and
onion in sweetened and salted vinegar, thickened with tomato paste—thus it
has four ingredients suspended in a three-part solution.
Salsas are hot sauces that are often prepared in the home (as opposed to
prepared, bottled sauces, though many salsas are now sold, ready-made, in
jars as well). The familiar taco sauce is a thin and finely puréed commercial
product—clearly a sauce, for our purposes, but not really a salsa. The most
common salsa, served in restaurants or at home to accompany chips, is salsa
roja. It’s a cooked mixture of tomatoes, chiles, onions, and garlic and is the
most common topping (along with an omnipresent and inauthentic thick
layer of melted cheese) for enchiladas in the United States. Criollo sauce, or
hogao, a type of salsa roja, is made in Colombia and usually flavored with
cumin. It’s available as a jarred sauce in US markets—at least those that cater
to Latin American customers.
Mexican salsa verde is usually a cooked sauce (though occasionally it may
be served raw) made primarily of puréed tomatillos and chiles and some
onion, whose flavors are brightened by lime juice and a bit of cilantro.
Pico de gallo is the standard Mexican restaurant fresh salsa (salsa cruda,
or raw sauce). It’s a chunky mixture of tomatoes and onions, seasoned with
cilantro, cumin, garlic, jalapeño or serrano chiles, lime juice, salt, and pep-
per. Chiltomate is close but adds onion, drops the lime juice, and is hotter

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because it substitutes habaneros for the jalapeños or serranos. Traditionally,

salsas are pounded in a mortar and pestle—a molcajete—but pico de gallo
(or salsa bandera, since it has the colors of the Mexican flag) is coarsely
chopped. Today, Mexican salsas are commonly made in a food processor
or a blender—even though grinding is said to better extract the ingredients’
flavors. The jeow mak len of Laos, a very similar dipping sauce, is more
piquant due to several fresh Thai chiles and has additional salt and umami
from fish sauce. Ghana’s take on salsa, kpakpo shito, is a mixture of chile
peppers, tomatoes, onion, and salt, pounded in a mortar.
Mexico has its own dipped sandwich, but unlike the French dip sand-
wich described in the last chapter, it is served with salsa rather than au jus.
Tortas ahogadas, literally “drowned sandwiches,” are soggy masses from
Guadalajara. As in so many other culinary “histories,” they were supposedly
invented by accident—when a cook dropped a sandwich into a vat of salsa.
The story is reminiscent of the one in which the first chimichanga came into
being when a burrito fell into a fryer filled with hot fat. Sometimes these
stories are true, but more often they should be taken with a side of salsa.
In the Canary Islands an entire class of salsas—called mojos—employs
reconstituted dried red chiles or fresh green ones. The ingredients are finely
chopped and combined with different spices (coriander, cumin, garlic, pa-
prika), oil, and something sour, such as citrus juices or vinegar. Variations
include one with pounded almonds (reflecting the Spanish roots of Canarian
cuisine) or locally grown saffron. Émigrés from the Canaries brought their
taste for mojos to the Caribbean. Cubans, Dominicans, and Puerto Ricans
each have their own versions of mojo, though in the Dominican Republic
mojo is known as wasakaka.
The Middle East has another take on salsas: zhug (or sahawiq or skhug).
Examples can include tomatoes, but most are based on hot peppers, along
with cardamom, cloves, coriander, cumin, garlic, and sometimes caraway
seeds. It’s a looser and coarser version of harissa (a North African paste of
hot chiles and various spices, such as the seeds of coriander and caraway),
ground in oil. The Israeli version, filfel chuma, sometimes includes lemon
juice. Most ready-made harissa is sold in various types of containers (com-
monly small tubes), and Tunisia is the main exporter. The muhammara pre-
pared by Iraqis, Syrians, and Turks is thickened with breadcrumbs and/or
ground walnuts—and is a little tarter, as it adds lemon juice or pomegranate

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molasses. Ajika, made in Georgia, skips the acidic juices of muhammara but
adds blue fenugreek (Trigonella caerulea). The simpler Turkish sauce, biber
salçası, is both condiment and ingredient. It’s a loose paste of sun-dried pep-
pers and salt and comes in two forms: acı and tatlı, hot or sweet, respectively.
Ajvar (ajbap, Serbian vegetable caviar) is a Balkan version. It’s mostly sweet
red peppers with some eggplant, garlic, and a bit of hot chile.
Other Middle Eastern dishes that border on dips include hummus and
baba ganoush (described in chapter 4). They are scooped up with each re-
gion’s traditional flatbread. The latter is slightly thinner than hummus. The
eggplant develops a smoky taste after being roasted to the point of collapse.
A Persian variation on baba ganoush, called naz khatoon, adds a salted pesto-
like mixture of herbs, dalal (typically basil, cilantro, and parsley); replaces
the lemon juice with verjuice to brighten the taste; and is garnished with
chopped walnuts to provide a little crunch.
Lebanese tarator is similarly tahini based and also includes garlic and
lemon juice, but it’s simpler, lacking either chickpeas or eggplant. It is gar-
nished with chopped parsley. Ab-doogh-khiar, an Iranian take on tarator,
suspends bits of basil, ground black pepper, and minced leeks, garnished
with chopped mint and raisins.
French mignonette serves a purpose much like that of salsas but tradi-
tionally accompanies raw oysters. The name also refers to cracked black
pepper—which is a key ingredient. Minced shallots and vinegar make up the
balance of the recipe for this sauce.
Today most suspensions have their suspended matter broken into tiny
fragments using machines, such as food processors. Before that, hand-­
operated food mills forced vegetable pulp through screens, basically the same
process as that employed by Guillaume Tirel with his tamis. If we go further
back, the method was truly ancient: pounding with a mortar and pestle. Many
still consider this to be the best method, as pounding extracts more flavorful
juice than processes that rely on cutting the food, no matter how finely.
There can be no better exemplar than pesto alla genovese. Its very name
is a commandment to break out the mortar and pestle. Classically, the sauce
is just fresh basil, garlic, salt, olive oil, and pine nuts, pounded together
then combined with cheeses: Parmigiano-Reggiano and pecorino sardo. Of
course, many other pestos can be prepared in the same manner; other herbs,
arugula, mint, or parsley may be combined with almonds or walnuts.

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Oysters on the half shell, with a little cup of mignonette dipping sauce. Source:
Gary Allen

Other Italian variations on pesto alla genovese include pesto alla calabrese
and pesto alla siciliana. The first replaces most of the basil with sweet red
peppers that are first grilled, then pounded together with garlic, onion,
and tomato, and pecorino sardo gives way to mild and creamy ricotta. The
second goes further, adding salty ricotta salata, pine nuts, and almonds,
as well as crushed red pepper for a bit of heat. It has much more basil than
pesto alla calabrese.
Pistou, which is pesto minus the cheese, is used as an ingredient in, or
condiment for, Provençal dishes. Another Provençal form of pesto, made
from anchovies, capers, and black olives, is known as tapenade. It is some-
times brightened with lemon juice or spiked with brandy. Persillade replaces
the basil in pistou with parsley and acidulates it with vinegar.
Pesto and pistou are by no means the only green sauces. “Green sauces”
exist in many places, and while they are all served cold and all are, in essence,
minced herbs in suspension, they are very different from each other. To start,
an Italian green sauce that isn’t pesto: chopped anchovies, capers, garlic,
onion, and parsley, suspended in olive oil and thickened with vinegar-soaked

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bread. The French version adds tarragon and replaces vinegar with lemon
juice. Here’s a sixteenth-century recipe by Bartolomeo Scappi:

Historic Recipe: To Prepare Green Sauce

Get parsley, spinach tips, sorrel, burnet, rocket and a little mint; chop them
up small and grind them in a mortar with thin slices of toast. It is optional
whether you put in almonds or hazelnuts, though for the sauce to be greener
you should not. When that is ground up, put in pepper and salt, moistening
it with vinegar. If it is thoroughly ground up, there is no need to strain it. It
can be made in the same way with vine sprouts—that is grape-vine tendrils.4

While green goddess dressing is thickened by mayonnaise (an emulsion

of raw egg and oil), German grüne soße (literally, “green sauce”) gets its
viscosity from mashed hard-boiled eggs and its color from a combination
of fresh herbs—the exact mixture of which varies from town to town—such
as borage, chervil, chives, dill, garden cress, lemon balm, lovage, parsley,
sorrel, salad burnet, and sometimes spinach or wild greens, plus shallots, in
the usual oil and vinegar. The Germans really depart from French and Ital-
ian cooks by stirring in sour cream (or buttermilk, or quark, or yogurt), then
thickening the mixture with sieved hard-boiled eggs.
Sauce gribiche is a somewhat green sauce that looks like an emulsion but
really isn’t. To make it, sieve hard-boiled egg yolks, mix with mustard, and
beat the mixture into a mild-flavored oil. At this point it resembles mayon-
naise, but when you add chopped pickles and capers, along with minced
herbs (chervil, parsley, and tarragon), all resemblance to the other green
sauces vanishes. It is classically served with delicately flavored proteins, like
poached fish or chicken, and garnished with the whites of the hard-boiled
eggs, coarsely chopped.
Sauce verte au pain, a simple suspension that dates back to the Renais-
sance, also featured hard-boiled eggs and some bread as thickeners. Its
liquid ingredients were white wine vinegar (perhaps verjuice, originally)
and oil. The suspended flavorings were minced capers, chives, cornichons,
and parsley.
The chimichurris of Argentina and Uruguay are predominantly herbal
salsas; they replace tomatoes with lots of parsley, sharpened with vinegar and

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oil. Pebre is the Chilean version, while llajwa is Bolivian; both are ground
on flat stone batans (similar to the metates used to grind masa in Mexico).
Throughout the Caribbean, a salsa is known as a mojo. These sauces are thin-
ner, serving as both dips and marinades. Their characteristic tropical flavor
results from combining the juices of oranges and limes instead of vinegar.
Simple mint sauces, with fresh herbs pounded in vinegar (and some-
times sweetened for use in desserts), accompany lamb in Great Britain
and Ireland—as mint jelly does in the United States. Such sauces were
common in the Middle Ages but have been largely replaced by other forms
of pesto today.
In the North African cooking of Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia,
chermoula is the herb-in-oil sauce of preference. Beginning with a suspen-
sion of finely chopped cilantro in olive oil and lemon juice, regional varia-
tions take off in all directions. Spices might include black pepper, chiles,
cloves, coriander seeds, cumin, and/or saffron. Aromatic ingredients like
garlic, onions, parsley, and preserved lemons might be added.
While hot sauces are popular condiments based on suspensions, tomato
ketchup is probably the most familiar. Ironically, the original ketchup didn’t
have tomatoes, nor was it a suspension. Kê-chiap was a Chinese sauce, a salty
solution of fermented fish, much like Roman liquamen or Vietnamese nam
pla. Chinese influence led to its being adopted in Indonesia, where English
traders discovered it. Laotian padaek, a slightly thicker fermented sauce
made from freshwater fish, follows the familiar pattern, but it often contains
bits of suspended fish flesh.
Not really understanding how the sauce was produced or having ac-
cess to the same ingredients that produced the umami-rich liquid, English
households adapted it as best they could to local circumstances. They
substituted mushrooms for the fish, accidentally matching the high level
of glutamate found in the original sauce (some early British and American
recipes strained out all solids, leaving a dark savory liquid, something like
Worcestershire, that is closer to a solution than a suspension). It may be
hard to believe today, but mushroom catsup was once incredibly popular.
Crosse & Blackwell sold seventeen thousand gallons of the stuff in 1857.5
They also made ketchup from pickled unripe walnuts.

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Historic Recipe: Walnut Ketchup

Ingredients—100 green walnuts, 1 quart of good vinegar, 3 ozs. of salt, 4 ozs.
of anchovies, 12 finely-chopped shallots, ½ stick of finely-grated horserad-
ish, ½ teaspoonful each of mace, nutmeg, ground ginger, ground cloves, and
pepper, 1 pint of port.
Method—The walnuts must be very young and tender. Bruise them slightly,
put them into a jar with the salt and vinegar, and let them remain for 8 days,
stirring them daily. Drain the liquor from them into a stewpan, add to it the
rest of the ingredients, simmer very gently for 40 minutes, and when cold
strain the preparation into small bottles. Cork them closely, cover with melted
wax, and store in a cool, dry place.6

Both versions found their way to the American colonies. Food historian
Karen Hess wrote, “Until after the mid-nineteenth century, ketchup in
American cookbooks was assumed to be of either mushrooms or oysters
unless otherwise specified. The earliest published recipe for tomato catsup
that I know is given by Mary Randolph in The Virginia Housewife, 1824,
who also gives one for tomato soy (a name that became popular), that dif-
fers little from the other.”7 Note the spelling “catsup,” which is still in use
in parts of the southern United States. Also note that oysters were used—a
throwback to the sauce’s origins. Finally, the use of “soy” is another nod to
Asian condiments loaded with umami (which Europeans had long found
confusing; remember that Jean Antheleme Brillat-Savarin thought soy sauce
came from India!).

Historic Recipe: Oyster Catsup

Get fine fresh oysters, wash them in their own liquor, put them in a marble
mortar with salt, pounded mace, and cayenne pepper, in the proportions of
one ounce salt, two drachms [1 drachm = 1/8 ounce] mace, and one of cayenne
to each pint of oysters; pound them together, and add a pint of white wine
to each pint; boil it some minutes, and rub it through a sieve; boil it again,
skim it, and when cold, bottle, cork, and seal it. This composition gives a fine
flavour to white sauces, and if a glass of brandy be added, it will keep good
for a considerable time.8

Eliza Smith’s The Compleat Housewife (1742) included five recipes with
“catchup” (and one with “ketchup”) as an ingredient. Her version of the

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Nineteenth-century label for a ketchup bottle. Source: Public domain

sauce was a mixture of anchovies, cloves, ginger, and mace, all boiled in
white wine. The only reason it might be considered a suspension was the
presence of grated horseradish (as horseradish root is insoluble, it is invari-
ably a component of suspension-type sauces, such as mustard and Japanese
wasabi). It had to be aged in the bottle for at least a week. The fermentation
recapitulates the sauce’s historical connection to ancient fish sauces.

Historic Recipes: Camp Ketchups

1. Anchovies, 4 oz., mix with beer, 2 quarts, white wine, 1 quart, boil a short
time, add peeled shalots, 3 oz., black pepper, mace, nutmegs, and ginger,
of each, ½ oz.; macerate for 14 days, and bottle.
2. Vinegar, 2 pints, walnut ketchup, 1 pint, mushroom ketchup, 3 oz., gar-
lic, 4 cloves, Cayenne pods, ½ oz., soy, 2 oz., wine, 4 oz., 3 anchovies,
1 oz. salt. Macerate together 3 weeks, and bottle.
3. Vinegar, 1 pint, walnut-ketchup, 4 oz., soy, 2 oz., 12 chopped anchovies,
2 cloves of garlic, and Cayenne pods, 1 drachm; macerate three weeks,
and bottle.9

Once ketchup began being made of tomatoes, it never looked back (Brit-
ish mushroom and walnut ketchups are still available, but they are only a
marginal part of the ketchup phenomenon). Early tomato ketchup recipes

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still contained anchovies, and they were still fermented, but by the early
nineteenth century both practices had been abandoned. Instead, makers
added vinegar (to make up for the lost tang of fermentation) and sugar (to
soften the effect of vinegar, to better preserve the bottled sauce . . . and be-
cause everyone loves sugar!). The addition of sugar has, more than any other
factor, made ketchup the universal condiment that it has become (although
tomatoes are also a potent source of glutamates).
Before the nineteenth century, ketchup was produced only in home
kitchens. With the advent of commercial canning, ketchup production
moved almost entirely to factories. In recent years, “artisanal” or “house-
made” ketchups have appeared sporadically, but they have never replaced
the familiar tapered bottles found on tables everywhere. These ersatz, and
somewhat pretentious, ketchups are even the butt of snarky attack articles.

No matter how hard you try, you can’t beat what Henry John Heinz bottled
back in 1876. You can’t fancy it up. Or actually, you CAN, but that’s the first
step on a short road directly to insignificance. Heinz’s flavor collisions are,
very literally and possibly scientifically, perfect. Our mouths love umami—
that evasive but very real fifth basic taste—and Heinz has a shitload of it.10

That ketchup is, in fact, a suspension is documented in US Department

of Agriculture (USDA) standards. The grading system used for ketchup is
based upon the percentage of solids (particles of tomato) it contains. The
highest rating, “fancy,” is given to ketchups that are 33 percent solids. The
lowest rating, “standard,” has only 25 percent solids. If your ketchup pours
from the bottle too easily, it’s not “fancy” (though commercial producers add
xanthan gum to increase ketchup’s viscosity, so one can be easily fooled).
Tomato ketchup use has spread around the world. During World War
II, tomatoes were in short supply in the Philippines, so María Y. Orosa (a
food technologist turned guerilla who was accidentally killed by American
artillery fire in 1945) substituted bananas and mangoes. The resulting prod-
ucts became Filipino staples (which are sometimes dyed red to imitate their
tomato forbears). In fact, tomato ketchup never really regained its place on
Filipinos’ tables or in their kitchens. However, bananas are not the only
fruit used to make ketchup-like sauces. Plums yield a sour condiment called
tkemali. It is sweet, sour, and spicy and plays the same role as ketchup in
Georgia (of the Caucasus, not the southern US state).

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In Mexico, a sweet and tart condiment that somewhat resembles ketchup

is common on street foods. The eponymous sauce was originally made
from a fruit called chamoy that was introduced by Asian immigrants before
the nineteenth century. Like Japanese umeboshi and Chinese li hing mui or
huamei (a kind of sour plum or apricot), various fruits—typically apricots,
mangoes, or plums—are salted or soaked in brine. The fruits can be eaten,
as is, like candy—or their pickling liquid can be thickened with fruit purée,
spiced with chile, and acidulated with vinegar. The resulting chamoy sauces
are sold in varying viscosities; thin ones are like bottled hot sauces, some-
what thicker ones are employed like ketchup, and the thickest ones are like
the dips Americans might serve with crudités. Chamoy, always dyed a bright
red, is so popular that ersatz versions, devoid of any fruit, flood the market—
and since the color is expected to be artificial, who would be the wiser?
Ketchup (whether tomato, mushroom, or banana) is often an ingredient
in cooking (just as it was in Eliza Smith’s day). We’ll see more on this later,
but just think how common it is in sauces for barbecue or in “cocktail sauce”
served with seafood, when it is combined with horseradish (and sometimes
Tabasco). It has even found its way back into Chinese kitchens, where it is
often a component of the sweet-and-sour dishes so common on ordinary
takeout menus.
Mustard is second only to ketchup in the pantheon of common condi-
ments. All mustards start with seeds (of various colors and Brassica species).
The suspended particles of ground powdered mustard or whole seeds, or a
combination of the two, produce a variety of textures and flavors.
The seeds must be macerated in a liquid (typically beer, vinegar, water,
or wine), but not merely to extract their flavor. The maceration actually
produces the hot flavor. The name “mustard” reflects this process, since it
derives from the Latin mustum—the unfermented grape juice used to de-
velop the ground seeds’ heat. Mustard gets its heat from a very different set
of compounds than are found in hot peppers (or even true pepper). Rather
than from capsaicin (in chiles) or piperine (in black pepper), mustard’s burn
comes from acrinyl isothiocyanate (in white mustard, Brassica hirta) or allyl
isothiocyanate (in black mustard, Brassica nigra; in brown mustard, Bras-
sica juncea). None of these compounds exist in the seeds themselves; they
are created when the seeds are broken in the presence of some form of mois-
ture. That releases the enzyme myrosinase and several other compounds

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Nineteenth-century label for a mustard jar. Source: Public domain

(glucosinolates; the types and relative amounts in different species account

for their differing flavors and intensities) in the seeds that, when combined,
produce their burning sensation. In addition to the compounds that deliver
its heat, mustard also contains some lecithin and a form of mucilage—a gelat-
inous polysaccharide—that aid in thickening any sauce to which it is added.
The temperature and acidity of the liquid determine how much isothio-
cyanate can be produced in those reactions. If the temperature is too high
or the pH is too low, the mustard won’t be hot. Excess heat can destroy the
myrosinase before it has a chance to react with the glucosinolates. Hence, it is
crucial that the seeds not be heated too much by the friction of milling them.
Before the eighteenth century, all mustard sauces were composed of whole or
lightly crushed seeds. This recipe, from the fourteenth century’s The Book of
Sent Soví, would not have been as fiery as today’s mustards.

Historic Recipe: Mostalla

Mustard our way: grind the mustard [seeds] and crush them, or grind them
in a mill. Scald two or three times, and then grind it and mix with cold broth.
And put in honey or sugar.
If you want to make some in the French way, mix it with vinegar. And you
can put in fruit syrup.11

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Clearly, honey mustard is not a new idea!

In 1720, a Mrs. Clements found a way to grind the seeds, removing
their husks, without creating undue heat. Within a century, Jeremiah Col-
man was able to market a type of finely ground powder that is the basis
for all modern mustards. The hottest purely mustard-based sauces are
found in Chinese restaurants. They are nothing but a thick suspension of
Colman-type12 powdered mustard in water that is allowed to rest before
serving. Much hotter are the scotch bonnet sauces, from Barbados and
other West Indian islands, whose inhabitants use mustard as a thickener
for their incendiary condiments.
The “wasabi” usually served with sushi in most Japanese restaurants is
prepared from a mixture of powdered mustard and ground dried horserad-
ish (and some green food coloring), mixed with water a little before serving
to develop its flavor. True wasabi is rare and costly and made by grating a
fresh root of Wasabia japonica.
Any cooked dishes that feature the heat of mustard (such as barbecue
sauces, especially those from South Carolina, or simple pan sauces) must
be made from mustard seeds that have already developed their isothiocya-
nate. This is generally accomplished by simply adding prepared mustard
(though it could be done by adding mustard powder to liquid and letting
it rest before cooking).
Hundreds of prepared mustards exist around the world; entire books
have been written about them, so we’ll only touch on their varieties.
American mustard comes in two basic forms: yellow mustard (usually
just called “mustard”) and spicy brown mustard. Yellow mustard—such
as French’s—is relatively mild and vinegary; in our house we call it “baby
mustard.” It contains less mustard powder (from white mustard seeds),
so it is generally thickened with a starch. Spicy brown mustard—such as
Gulden’s—is coarser, with bits of brown mustard seeds visible. Some spicy
brown mustards add the zip of horseradish. Many varieties of honey mus-
tard can be found on American grocery shelves—but unlike the basic mus-
tards, which are fairly straightforward preparations, they often contain many
additives, such as high-fructose corn syrup, sugar, modified corn starch,
xanthan gum, invert sugar, and sodium benzoate.
French—as opposed to French’s—mustards are not bright yellow (they
don’t contain turmeric). Originally made with verjuice, the tart juice of

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unripe grapes, most are made with white wine. Dijon mustard (named for
the Burgundian town that is the center of Gallic mustard production) is
finely ground brown mustard seeds, moistened with wine. Grey Poupon,
the brand best known in the United States, is named not for its less-intense
coloration but for the two men who founded the company in the eighteenth
century. Another French producer is Maille (making dozens of types, from
simple Dijon mustard, to whole grain mustards, to special ones incorporat-
ing expensive ingredients, like chanterelles, cognac, morels, or black truf-
fles). Pommery (another eighteenth-century company) makes Moutarde de
Meaux. Unlike most French mustards, it does not come from Dijon—Meaux
is in the Île-de-France region, near Paris, where a type of Brie is made. Its
label boasts the mustard quote attributed to Brillat-Savarin, though produc-
ers from Dijon or Düsseldorf might disagree.
ABB (Adam Bernhard Bergrath) began making mustard in Düsseldorf
about fifty years before Maurice Grey and Auguste Poupon set up their
shop in Dijon. The coarse-ground mustard of Düsseldorf was made from a
mixture of seed types and macerated in vinegar instead of wine. If it seems
familiar to American diners, that’s because the common spicy brown mus-
tard is based on an old Düsseldorf recipe.
Horseradish also gets its distinctive bite from allyl isothiocyanate, which
forms when the fresh root is ground, breaking its cellular structure and
allowing the catalytic reactions seen in mustards. “Prepared horseradish”
is grated root in vinegar. It’s too coarse to be a true suspension, but the
minimal amount of liquid makes it seem like a suspension. In the United
Kingdom, lemon juice may replace the vinegar in “horseradish sauce,” a
term that has a different meaning in the United States. There, “prepared
horseradish” is sometimes sold dyed deep red with beet juice, a style that is
popular in Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe. Russian khrenovina
is like American cocktail sauce on steroids; tomatoes and horseradish are
ground together with garlic, pepper, salt, and anything else Russians believe
will enhance a sauce they rightly call gorloder, the “throat throttler.” No
doubt, ice-cold vodka is the antidote of choice.
In many South Indian recipes, whole mustard seeds are toasted or fried,
thereby destroying the myrosinase. They provide a pleasant nutty flavor
but no heat to the sauce. Kasundi, however, is quite hot. It’s a form of rel-
ish originally made of fermented mustard seeds. Many versions today add

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canned tomato products, sugar, and vinegar. Chicago chef Tim Graham
once described it as “ketchup with a lot more going on.”13
When using ketchup or mustard just doesn’t seem right—such as when
there’s a steak on our plate—we have a number of suspension-type condi-
ments from which to choose. These so-called steak sauces are generally
as brown as Worcestershire but much thicker. Most of them originated in
Great Britain and migrated to the New World.
A.1. steak sauce was first produced commercially in 1831, though it
didn’t acquire that name until 1868. The H. W. Brand Company showed
it at an international cuisine exposition, where it earned the description
“A.1.”—hence the name by which it will always be remembered. A long
series of corporate mergers concluded with its belonging to the American
conglomerate Kraft Foods in 1999. The sauce is based on vinegar, but its
suspended ingredients include a purée of oranges, raisins, sultanas, and
tomatoes flavored with garlic, onion, and spices. It is sweetened with corn
syrup, darkened with caramel coloring, and thickened with xanthan gum.
A similar British product (which has since become Americanized) is
HP Sauce. It and a few similar competitors—known collectively as “brown
sauce”—completely replaced A.1. in England, but HP is still a big seller in
America, Australia, and Canada. It consists of malt vinegar and a suspen-
sion of ground dates and tomatoes, flavored by some unspecified spices and
given a sour bite by tamarind extract (like Worcestershire sauce). Originally
produced by Frederick Gibson Garton in 1895, the sauce is now made by
Heinz in Canada, Mexico, and the Netherlands. Heinz 57 is somewhat dif-
ferent. It is closer to ketchup, albeit with added mustard, which gives it a
brighter, more yellow-orange color than other steak sauces.
Another brown suspension, Pickapeppa, hails from Jamaica. First pro-
duced in 1921, it has a vinegar base (fermented from cane sugar), sweetened
with more sugar. Its suspended components are mangoes, onions, peppers,
raisins, and tomatoes. It’s seasoned with black pepper, cloves, garlic, gin-
ger, orange zest, sea salt, and thyme. While the name sounds like the sauce
would have a hot flavor, it doesn’t; it actually tastes a lot like A.1. For those
who prefer something more piquant, Pickapeppa makes a hotter version that
includes Scotch bonnet peppers.
Elsewhere in the Caribbean region, one can sample many local sauces
based on Scotch bonnets. While ripe habaneros are red, Scotch bonnets are

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usually yellow-orange in color, so the sauces are school-bus yellow. Many

of these sauces are thickened with mustard and/or a purée of carrots that
accentuates the tropical color and fruitiness of the peppers.
Umami-laden sauces based on dried fish are not unique to ancient Rome
and Great Britain. Chinese shacha sauce is commonly used as a condiment,
by itself, or as a component of dips, rubs, and soups in Fujian, Guangdong,
and Taiwan. The sauce consists of dried shrimp and dried local flat fish,
pounded in oil with chiles, garlic, and shallots. The Taiwanese call it “bar-
becue sauce.” They make a dipping sauce of it with chiles, Chinkiang black
vinegar, cilantro, garlic, scallions, sesame oil, and soy sauce. On the other
side of the globe, Ghanaians make the very similar shito from various dried
crustaceans (crayfish, shrimp, or prawns), smoke-dried bonga shad (Eth-
malosa fimbriata), garlic, and onions, with some added chiles and tomato
paste. Curiously, it’s served on tables in Chinese restaurants in Ghana as a
substitute for the usual hot ma la oil.
The sambals of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka are yet more exam-
ples of this type of chili-garlic-ginger-scallion-shallot-dried-fish suspension.
They are traditionally ground in a mortar and pestle, producing a coarse pu-
rée of suspended spices and protein. Hundreds of variations on the condi-
ment’s basic recipe exist in the region—some raw, some cooked, some with
fresh or fermented fruits, thickened with different types of nuts (candlenuts,
coconuts), and containing a variety of dried fishes, as well as, of course, one
or more of the six types of chiles grown in the area.
Nam chims are Thai dipping sauces; they are very fluid and used pri-
marily for dipping foods such as grilled meats and fried fishcakes. Thai
cooks start their nam chims and curries with chile pastes (nam phriks) and
curry pastes (krung gaeng). The latter come in five basic varieties (as close
as Thai cuisine comes to a system of mother sauces): red, orange, green,
yellow, and mussaman.
Red curry paste (krung gaeng ped) gets its color from fresh, ripe prik e noo
(Thai chiles, also called “bird chiles” or “mouse-dropping chiles” because
of their size; Capsicum minimum) and/or the dried version (prik haeng).
It also contains salt, garlic, lemongrass, fresh turmeric root, and kapi (pre-
served shrimp paste).
Orange curry paste (krung gaeng som) contains prik chi fa (spur chile
peppers; Capsicum annuum acuminatum), garlic, and shallots, plus sour

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tamarind juice and/or rice vinegar; kapi and fish sauce provide umami. It
also includes the rhizomes of krachai (lesser galangal; Kæmpferia galanga),
a resinous relative of ginger.
Green curry paste (krung gaeng keo wan) uses very hot fresh green chiles,
called prik e noo, and herbs such as coriander root14 and lemongrass; spices
like the seeds of caraway, coriander, and cumin; cloves and nutmeg; aromat-
ics such as ka (galangal), makrut15 lime peel, garlic, krachai, and shallots;
salt and black pepper; and a dose of umami from kapi.

Ready-made green curry paste. Source: Gary Allen

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Yellow curry paste (krung gaeng lueang)16 and mussaman curry paste
(gaeng mussaman kaa) are very similar, though the former is strongly col-
ored with turmeric. They feature sweet spices, like cardamom, cinnamon,
cloves, coriander seed, and star anise; the heat comes from red chiles and
white pepper, and aromatic properties are the result of cumin, galangal,
garlic, makrut lime peel, lemongrass, and shallots. They also get plenty
of umami from kapi and fish sauce. The mussaman name and the sweet
spices—not much used in Thai cooking—show the influence of ancient
trade with Indian Muslims.
These sauces are prepared, at home, by pounding paste ingredients in a
mortar or simply buying ready-made curry pastes in tiny cans, jars, or plastic
pouches. Curiously, shitor din, a spicy paste from West Africa, is almost
exactly the same as the base of these Thai pastes: dried shrimp and chiles
pounded in oil. Also, as in Thailand, ready-mixed shito is available in markets
for urban cooks who lack the time and mortar needed to make the traditional
sauce for themselves. Alternatively, they can prepare a fresh version, with the
same name but more like a salsa, using chiles, tomatoes, and onions.
The nam phriks of Thailand are pounded chile and fermented-fish
sauces, much like sambals. Their viscosity varies, from sauces as thin as Ta-
basco to pastes that are nearly dry. Also like sambals, they come in dozens
of local varieties.
“Chili sauce” refers to certain sambals that may or may not be hot. They
shouldn’t be confused with bottled American “chili sauce,” which is merely
a variation on ketchup—albeit one that may be slightly spicy. According to
the USDA’s definition, chili sauces may contain at least some green or red
peppers, but it’s not a requirement.
Asian chile sauces, by contrast, are made primarily of peppers, either
hot or sweet. Thai sweet chili sauce, for example, consists of bits of pick-
led chiles suspended in a slightly jellied solution of vinegar and several
forms of sugar, colored with paprika. It can be used as an ingredient (as
a glaze) or a condiment or dipping sauce. It’s like generic Chinese duck
sauce, but with attitude.
Chinese hot chili paste, la jiao jiang, is only used as an ingredient—
though a dollop of it may be served atop a dish, to be stirred in by the
diner, at the table. It’s almost entirely chile pepper, fermented with garlic
and sometimes soybeans, then ground coarsely in oil. One exception—in

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Nineteenth-century label for a chili sauce bottle. Source: Public domain

which hot chili paste comes to the table directly, unalloyed by other ingredi-
ents—comes to mind: Dan dan noodles (fresh noodles, served cold, with an
emulsified sauce of sesame paste and/or peanut butter, sesame oil, Sichuan
peppercorns, minced garlic and ginger, soy sauce, and sugar) are often gar-
nished with cucumber, sliced chicken, scallions, and a contrasting spoonful
of glistening red la jiao jiang. All or some of that spicy paste, depending on
the diner’s tolerance for pain, gets stirred into the noodles at table.
The familiar Thai (and other Southeast Asian) peanut sauce that typically
accompanies grilled skewers of chicken (saté) is served hot. The peanut but-
ter is thinned with lime juice and soy and sweetened with jaggery or brown
sugar. Like the sauce for the sesame noodles, it’s loaded with minced garlic
and ginger, but with Thai chile paste instead of Chinese hot pepper paste.
It tastes more Southeast Asian because it’s thinned with fish sauce and gets
a sour kick from tamarind or lime juice.
Salsa de cachuate y chile de árbol is oddly reminiscent of these peanut
sauces, though it has a decidedly Mexican twist. Dried árbol chiles and black
pepper replace the hot pepper paste, and spices (allspice and thyme) reflect

105
Chinese chili paste with garlic, an intense addition to Sichuan sauces, such as that on
Mapo Tofu. Source: Gary Allen
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the tropical flavors of Chiapas. It differs from the sauce on dan dan noodles
by being cooked, more like saté sauce. Mexican cooks dollop it on grilled
chicken or shrimp. Salsa macha—a similar Mexican sauce from Veracruz—is
an uncooked purée of peanuts with dried chiles, garlic, and olive oil.
Ethiopians make a paste of their spice blend, berbere (“composed of hot
and sweet Chiles, it also contains a great, and varying, number of other herbs
and spices, such as Allspice, Basil, Bishop’s Weed, Black Pepper, Carda-
mom, Cinnamon, Cloves, Coriander, Cumin, Fenugreek leaves and seeds,
Garlic, Ginger, Onions, Nutmeg, Rue Seeds, Salt and Turmeric”17). The
ingredients are pounded together with garlic, then moistened with wine.
The resulting paste, called awaze, is used as a dip or condiment at table.
Ketchup has occasionally been called “red sauce” (especially in countries of
the British Commonwealth), but most people would agree that this term more
often applies to Italian tomato sauce—the stuff we find on spaghetti and pizza.
We know that the French have their sauce tomate, but Italian red sauces are
more iconic. What distinguished the Italian red sauces from their French rela-
tives is the fact that sauce tomate is thickened with roux, whereas Italian sauces
achieve their viscosity by reduction—that is, they increase the relative amount
of suspended matter by eliminating some of the suspending liquid.
In Louisiana, “tomato gravy” is similar to sauce tomate, though it usually
contains green peppers, onions, and some form of cured pork fat. Some-
times called “Creole sauce,” or sauce picante, it is definitely not the “gravy”
or “Sunday gravy” prepared by Italian Americans. That garlic-scented to-
mato sauce is enriched by several meats: braciole, meatballs, sausages, and
maybe even pork chops.

Historic Recipe: Vermicelli co le Pomodoro

Pick four rotola . . . of tomatoes. Cut out any blemishes, remove the seeds
and water and boil the tomatoes. When they are soft, pass the pulp through a
sieve and cook down by a third. When the sauce is sufficiently dense, boil two
rotola . . . of vermicelli. Drain the pasta and add it to the sauce along with salt
and pepper. Stir and cook the mixture until the sauce has dried and serve.18

Ippolito Cavalcanti’s recipe, above, from 1839 was the first of a vast
continuum of Italian tomato-based sauces—from basic marinara19 (toma-
toes, olive oil, garlic, red pepper, basil, and oregano) to sugo alla puttanesca
(“whore’s sauce”—like marinara but intensified with anchovies, capers, and

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olives—a relatively modern invention created no earlier than the 1950s in

Campania) to sugo all’amatriciana (sauce for a woman of Amatrice—like
marinara but with added guanciale, jowl bacon, and sometimes onion and
chile) to arrabbiata (“angry” sauce—also like marinara but with even more
hot pepper; think fra diavolo). Italian red sauces constitute an extended fam-
ily of daughter sauces on their own.
Ragù, which many consumers only know as a brand of jarred tomato
sauce, is etymologically connected to French ragoût,20 a kind of slow-cooked
stew. The Italian American Sunday sauce is basically ragù alla napoletana,
a thick meat sauce with plenty of tomatoes cooked so long that the various
forms of beef, pork, and veal fall apart. Ragù alla barese (from Bari, in Apulia)
is similar but made with beef, lamb, pork, and even—occasionally—horse.
Those southern Italian sauces are very different from ragù alla sugo alla
bolognese and ragù alla genovese. The former uses very little tomato product
and the latter none at all, being mostly chunks of beef simmered with onions.
Rich ragù di fegatini, a specialty of Emilia Romagna, is chopped chicken liv-
ers slowly cooked in butter, with milk and chicken stock, seasoned with bay
leaf and freshly ground nutmeg. This ragù is served atop tagliatelle that has
been sauced with egg yolks and grated Parmigiano-Reggiano. It’s much like
carbonara, minus the black pepper and guanciale. Unlike French ragoûts,
Italian ragùs are served not on their own but as sauces for pasta.
Some tomato sauces are uncooked. Checca sauce is a summery mix of
minced fresh tomatoes, olive oil, and basil, with morsels of mozzarella,
that serves as a topping for hot pasta. It’s something like insalata caprese
and pasta, all in one bowl. I sometimes make this sauce when tomatoes and
herbs are at their best:

Recipe: Summer Sauce

Yield: enough sauce for a pound of pasta

Ingredients
3 large ripe tomatoes, coarsely chopped
1 shallot, peeled and coarsely chopped
1 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
1 Tbsp. fresh tarragon, chopped
to taste salt and freshly ground black pepper

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Method
1. Place first four ingredients in blender or food processor. Blend until not
quite smooth, with some small chunks still visible.
2. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper.
3. Allow to rest, covered, for at least a half-hour, so flavors can blend.
4. Toss with hot pasta.

Of course, the Italians couldn’t have had tomatoes until after the New
World was discovered—and they only learned to make tomato sauce from
the Spanish, who had in turn learned about it in Mexico. Bernardino de Sa-
hagún, a Franciscan missionary to the New World, had seen Aztecs prepar-
ing it in the mid-sixteenth century. Mexicans still make a descendant of that
ancient sauce: salsa de tomate rojo. It’s tomatoes (fresh or canned) cooked
with olive oil, salt, sugar, and ground chile negro.
Italians did have at least one red sauce, even before the introduction of the
New World’s pomodoro. In the fourteenth century, a merchant, Francesco
Datini, traveled between Avignon, Florence, and Venice. He chronicled
every aspect of his life in hundreds of thousands of documents (that were
only discovered in the nineteenth century), and among them he listed a par-
ticular favorite dish: savore sanguino, a blood-colored sauce made of minced
meat, wine, and a pounded mixture of fragrant red sandalwood, cinnamon,
raisins, and sumac. Think of it as a kind of Middle Eastern ragú bolognese.
Once adopted in Italy, tomato sauce traveled and evolved around the
Mediterranean. Greek and Balkan recipes often include cinnamon and
honey (which is why Cincinnati chili has a sweetly spicy taste—the first
makers of that regional dish all emigrated from the Balkans). Rochester
sauce, from upstate New York, tops hot dogs. Like Cincinnati chili, it’s
a ground meat sauce with onion and garlic, sweetened with allspice, cin-
namon, and cloves, but it actually contains some chili powder. Chili dogs,
New York City style, are topped with a sauce that’s closer to chili con carne,
containing chile powder, cumin, oregano, ground beef, and some tomato
product. The secret—the element that makes New York’s chili dogs taste
different from those from anywhere else—is that the sauce is thinned with
the water in which the dogs have cooked for ages. As one wag quipped,
“You know Spring has come to New York when the hot dog vendors
change the water in their carts.”

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Dakkous al-tamat, a type of tomato sauce made in Arabic kitchens, is

similar to marinara but gets a Middle Eastern edge from lemon juice and
cumin. A Lebanese variation contains mint, while one from Kuwait omits
herbs but increases the amount of hot pepper. Iraqi cooks might add baha-
rat (a variable spice blend consisting of some combination of allspice, black
pepper, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, cumin, hot pepper, and nutmeg).
Arabic cooking techniques influenced European cooking from the days
of the Crusades through the Renaissance. Dishes tended to have lots of
sweet spices and were thickened with ground nuts. The Spanish brought
that tradition to Mexico, where they discovered that the Aztecs were already
doing similar things with their sauces. Moles (like the famous mole poblano)
and pipians, which used ground pumpkin seeds instead of nuts, were much
like the Islamic sauces the conquistadors already knew.
The mole idea returned to the Iberian Peninsula (at least the chile part).
The classic Catalan sauce, romesco, pounds roasted red peppers, both sweet
and hot, with garlic and oil, thickened with breadcrumbs and, in true Is-
lamic fashion, nuts (usually almonds but, at times, hazelnuts or pine nuts).

Recipe: Romesco Sauce I

Ingredients
1 dried sweet or slightly hot large red pepper such as
“New Mexico” style, seeds and stems removed
½ dried red chili pepper, seeds removed
1 cup water
½ cup red wine vinegar
¾ cup olive oil
2 slices French-style bread, ¼ inch thick
1 large tomato, skinned and chopped
36 blanched almonds (about two ounces), lightly toasted
6 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
to taste salt

Method
1. Place the dried pepper and chili pepper in a saucepan with the water and
vinegar. Bring to a boil, then simmer 5 minutes. Drain and cool.
2. In a skillet, heat ¼ cup of the oil. Fry the bread slices until golden on both
sides. Remove.

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3. In the same oil sauté the tomato for about 3 minutes.

4. Place the peppers, fried bread, tomatoes (including the oil in which they
were cooked), almonds, garlic, the remaining ½ cup of oil, and the salt in a
processor or blender, until well blended but with small pieces remaining.
5. Let sit at room temperature until ready to use.21

Xató differs somewhat from romesco; it replaces almonds with hazelnuts, is

sharpened with lemon juice, and uses only nyora peppers (the ones used to
produce Spanish paprika). Salvitxada, another romesco variant, doesn’t grind
nuts to thicken it. Garlic-rubbed toast and a little vinegar perform that function.
The Islamic influence had also spread through central Africa, where
after New World squashes and pumpkins were introduced, their seeds
were pounded into a kind of flour (egusi) that thickened soups into sauces.
These pipian-like egusi sauces are still common in Africa and often include
chiles, onions, tomatoes, and palm oil. A thinner version, still called egusi,
is more of a soup.
Korean fish sauces tend to be cloudy, with suspended particles of fer-
mented fish, so they’re not included in the “Solutions” chapter. Aekjeot,
like Japanese fish sauces, can be made from many different fish species.
Anchovies (myoelchi) are the most common, but similar sauces can be fer-
mented from shrimp (saewoojeot) or various sand lances, known as kanari
(Ammodytes ssp.) as well.
Brazilian tucupi is prepared from cassava tubers (Manihot esculenta) by
pressing and allowing the starch, known as manioc or tapioca, to settle out.
Since cassava contains two glycosides that are broken down by the enzyme
linamarase to produce poisonous hydrogen cyanide, tucupi must be boiled
for a long time before it becomes safe to consume. The cloudy yellow sauce
is sour and is commonly used with fatty meats, such as duck.
Speaking of duck, already rich sauce bordelaise is sometimes made even
richer by stirring in the puréed blood, liver, and marrow of the duck. That
extravagant suspension is called sauce rouennaise and accompanies the re-
maining part of a pressed duck. It’s a rather old-fashioned recipe, one that’s
not seen very often anymore, except in the fanciest (old-school) French
white-tablecloth establishments.
The most rarified forms of suspension sauces are probably foams and
smokes. Foam is merely a mass of bubbles of gas suspended in a liquid.

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Whipped cream is a typical example; tiny pockets of air (or, in the case of
aerosol canned whipped cream, nitrous oxide gas) are distributed through-
out a matrix composed of butterfat and milk proteins. Thousands of tiny
gas bubbles disrupt the liquid’s flow, making it more viscous, or thicker. As
long as the foam is kept cold enough to prevent the butterfat from melting
and allowing trapped gas to escape, it is fairly stable. The bubbles in less
viscous foams are supported only by the surface tension of the liquid; they
are considerably more ephemeral.
Nondairy whipped toppings are an amalgam of industrial products:
emulsifiers, partially hydrogenated oil, stabilizers, sweeteners (corn syrup,
high-fructose corn syrup, and/or nonnutritive substances like aspartame
and neotame), and water. Fat-free varieties substitute various gums for the
oil. Strangely, one brand of nondairy topping (Cool Whip) outsells real
whipped cream (such as Reddi-wip) by a wide margin.22
Sweet whipped cream recipes have been around at least since the six-
teenth century. This anonymous one features an ingredient that is fairly
exotic to modern Western tastes but was common in medieval Europe and
still appears in recipes from the Middle East: rosewater.

Historic Recipe: A Dyschefull of Snowe

Take a pottelle of swete thycke creame and the whytes of eyghte egges, and
beat them altogether wyth a spone, then putte them in youre creame and a
saucerfull of Rosewater, and a dyshe full of Sugar wyth all, then take a stycke
and make it cleane, and than cutte it in the end foure square, and therewith
beate al the aforesayde thynges together and ever as it ryseth take it of and put
it in a Collaunder. . . . And yf you have wafers caste some wyth all and thus
serve them forthe.23

Foams, such as whipped cream, don’t have to be sweet (the dessert ver-
sion is crème Chantilly). They can be flavored with mint, lemon zest, or
horseradish (or wasabi) as savory sauces for cold dishes—the last two make
delightful adjuncts to smoked trout. The only connection between crème
Chantilly and sauce Chantilly (a hollandaise derivative) is that both include
whipped cream. Chantilly is another name for mousseline, a sauce lightened
by foam, be it whipped cream or stiffly beaten egg whites.
Another dessert, zabaglione, is usually prepared tableside because its
warm foam of egg yolks and sugar, flavored with marsala wine, is fairly

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unstable. More solid and stable egg foams, such as meringues and soufflés,
manage to maintain their structure only through complete cooking of their
proteins—their essential protein being albumen, which is found only in the
whites of the eggs. Zabaglione can never be firmer than a soft custard be-
cause, while yolks do contain proteins, albumen is not one of them—which
is also why, when they’re cooked, their texture is so different.
Many liquids can form foams, but most are rather evanescent. Modern
culinary applications for more stable foams require the use of emulsifiers (so
will be addressed in the chapter on emulsions). Perhaps the most extreme
examples of suspensions are the smokes so beloved by molecular gastrono-
mers. Savory tea leaves, wood chips, or herbs are burned, and their fumes
are forced into small balloons of blown sugar or under a glass dome. At the
table the guest breaks open the sparkling globe of smoke or whisks away
the transparent cloche and inhales the fragrant cloud. It’s the purest form of
sauce imaginable: it’s a fluid saturated with desirable aromas, it enhances the
flavor of one’s meal (our perception of flavor is, after all, mostly olfactory),
it’s free of any artificial thickeners, and it’s utterly devoid of calories. Scented
smokes, when output by a device that’s rather like a small hair dryer, can also
serve as ingredients in other sauces.24
We can consider smokes sauces since they are fluid, often a by-product of
the cooking process, and serve to enhance the dishes they accompany. They
consist of microscopic particles or droplets (of the foodstuff being served,
the cooking medium, or the fuel used for cooking, or else some combination
of these) suspended in the air. Obviously these particles tend to disperse
throughout the room, so they must be contained until served with a flourish
at the table. They are also likely to fall out of suspension if they cool (hot air
molecules move much more energetically than cool ones, and it’s the bump-
ing around by all that movement that keeps the smoke particles from settling
out, or condensing).
Are the smokes of molecular gastronomers really all that different from
the fragrant essence of ortolan ostentatiously—if surreptitiously—inhaled by
gourmets? Only, perhaps, in their delivery system.
Suspensions, by their very nature, are temporary—unless aided by ex-
terior forces (or compounds). However, some interesting variations on the
suspension theme will be addressed in the following chapters—beginning
with the next one on gels.

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GELS

A gel can be thought of as a special, reverse sort of suspension in which

relatively small amounts of starch or protein swell with absorbed liq-
uid. In effect, the liquid is suspended in a matrix of these other substances.
If made well, gel-based sauces that build upon simple solutions are appetiz-
ingly transparent but thick enough to feel rich and substantial.
While most proteins, when cooked, become more solid (think of the
white of an egg or raw chicken flesh), some proteins are soluble under
certain conditions. Specifically, the collagen that forms connective tissue
in bones, skin, and ligaments—if cooked long and at a simmering tempera-
ture—will release gelatin into an aqueous solution. Individual molecules of
protein drift as tiny strands throughout the liquid. As water is removed
through evaporation, some of the strands connect to one another, forming a
three-dimensional network that stabilizes the liquid, preventing it from flow-
ing freely. The liquid becomes more viscous. If the resulting gelatin solution
is further reduced (bringing the strands into even closer contact), a gel forms
that is solid at room temperature (such as glace de viande, aspic, or Jell-O).
A culinarily useful feature of such gels is that they melt when reheated.
The increased movement of the liquid’s molecules (that’s all heat is) pushes
the strands apart, and the glace melts. Chunks of solidified glace, when added
to other liquids, melt, giving them increased viscosity and a rich mouth-feel.
If one of these collagen-thickened sauces becomes too thick upon cooling,
its viscosity can be adjusted merely by reheating or adding water.

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Bartolomeo Scappi considered gelatin a sauce because ingredients (such

as chunks of meat in headcheese or souse) were suspended in it. To our
minds, that seems like a rather extreme example—though the warmth of the
diner’s mouth does melt the gelatin matrix into an unctuous kind of sauce.
Starches also thicken sauces by suspending their liquid components, but
they do so in a different manner. Starch granules, when heated in the pres-
ence of water, become engorged with it (plus any flavor molecules that hap-
pen to be dissolved in it). Think of them as tiny sponges. They immobilize
the water, preventing it from flowing. This increases the liquid’s viscosity to
different degrees, depending on the starch-to-water ratio, the type of starch,
and the degree to which the resulting gel is allowed to cool.
Some gelatinized starches yield sauces that are transparent, or nearly trans-
parent, as seen in many Chinese dishes, especially those made outside China.
Hoisin sauce—ground chiles, garlic, and soybeans, suspended in a sugar
solution (the version from Beijing uses some vinegar)—is thickened with
various starch gels derived from rice and/or wheat. It is an ingredient in
many Chinese sauces but is also served as a condiment in its own right. It
is frequently combined with other ingredients to make dips, and not just
in Chinese cooking. The Vietnamese call it tuong den and serve it with
southern-style phở and spring rolls. Tianmianjiang, sweet bean sauce, is
very similar to hoisin (and is often used in its place) but is a little sweeter. In
Korea, the same sauce is known as chunjang.
Hoisin’s name (Cantonese for “seafood”) suggests that it should be
used with fish, but most Westerners are more familiar with it as the sweet
companion to Peking duck. Many prepared Chinese sauces, such as lob-
ster sauce and duck sauce, receive their names from their intended use, not
their main ingredient. Pale lobster sauce lacks soy sauce and is basically
starch-thickened chicken stock flavored with garlic, ginger, and sometimes
a garnish of fermented black beans. Duck sauce—so often found in little
plastic pouches at the bottom of a takeout bag—is a thin jelly of apricots,
peaches, plums, or pineapples, plus ginger, chile, sugar, and vinegar.
When intended to serve as an ingredient instead of a condiment, it’s sold
in jars labeled “plum sauce.”
Oyster sauce, however, is actually made of oysters (with the exception
of vegetarian oyster sauce, which gets its umami from mushrooms). It also
contains salt, sugar, and hydrolyzed vegetable protein—a soy sauce sur-

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rogate. Starch, usually in the form of wheat flour, provides its viscosity;
consequently its soft gel is cloudy, not transparent.
Most Filipino dipping sauces are quite thin and uncooked—just a sour
liquid with various garnishes. However, that cuisine’s sweet-and-sour
sauce, made to accompany fried appetizers, is a solution of brown sugar,
soy sauce, and vinegar (or kalamansi juice) heated to thicken with tomato-
based ketchup and a slurry of either corn starch or flour. Filipinos also
cook a plum sauce that contains cayenne, preserves, and vinegar—in a thin
gel of corn starch.
While many of his sauces depended on flour for thickening, Auguste
Escoffier recognized the value, and potential, of other starches. “Starch
being the only one from among the different constituents of flour which
really affects the thickening of sauces, there would be considerable advan-
tage in preparing roux either from a pure form of it, or from substances
with kindred properties, such as . . . arrowroot, corn starch, etc. It is only
habit that causes flour to be still used as the binding element of roux, and,
indeed, the hour is not so far distant when the advantages of the changes I
propose will be better understood.”1 While the largely starch-based sauce
hierarchy of Escoffier may no longer adequately describe today’s much
more eclectic collection of sauces, a few classicists lament the loss of the
old ways. André Soltner, one of the last practitioners of classic French
cuisine, was quite outspoken on the subject: “I am worried because in the
past ten years, we have gotten away from these sauces. This has happened
before. Forty years ago, when nouvelle cuisine was in vogue, chefs thought
that roux-thickened sauces were too heavy. They tried to thicken sauces
with purées or arrowroot or just butter. I think they were wrong, but we’re
seeing it again. The younger generation of chefs doesn’t know how to
make them. If they haven’t learned, they might be able to cook nicely—but
they will not be able to cook properly.”2
Starch-thickened sauces are truly ancient. The “cereal cake” used as a
thickener in Mesopotamia served essentially the same function as ship’s bis-
cuit used to thicken chowders or the ginger snap cookie crumbs that convert
sauerbraten’s marinade into the gravy that joins it at the table.
A common complaint about starch-thickened sauces (especially gravies) is
their tendency to form unpalatable lumps. Lumps can easily be avoided if we
think about the way starches behave when added to hot aqueous solutions.

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If you were to fish a typical lump out of a sauce and slice it in half, its
structure would be obvious. The outside of the lump is moist and shiny,
while the inside consists of dry, unmixed starch. The structure reveals the
lump’s formation. When starches are mixed with hot water (usually around
141 degrees Fahrenheit, depending on the type of starch), the individual
grains swell as they absorb water. The process is known as gelatinization.
Gelatinized starch is relatively impermeable, which is to say it doesn’t allow
water to pass through it. When hot water is added too quickly, the outside
of a small mass of dry starch gelatinizes, sealing and preventing water from
reaching the raw starch inside. A lump is born.
If, however, you mix the starch into cold water to form a slurry (so no ge-
latinization occurs) and then add it to the hot water, each individual granule
is gelatinized, and a nice smooth sauce is the result. This method succeeds
because the starch granules are kept separate until they are heated to the
point of gelatinization.
Other methods accomplish the same result. French chefs stir beurre
manié into hot stock to thicken sauces. Beurre manié is merely a mixture of
flour and butter, rubbed together—literally in one’s hand—effectively coat-
ing each tiny grain in a layer of fat. That way, hot liquid never has a chance to
coat a mass of starch with impermeable gel. Its primary advantage over roux
is that it requires no separate cooking and can adjust a sauce’s viscosity at
the last minute. Small bits of beurre manié are simply tossed into the cooking
liquid and stirred until it’s properly thickened.
The roux in classic French sauces does the same thing but uses hot fat,
instead of cold butter, to isolate the particles of flour and cook out some of
their raw taste. In the seventeenth century, François Pierre La Varenne laid
out the proper way to use roux to thicken sauces.

Historic Recipe: Thickening of Flowre

Melt some lard, take out the mammocks;3 put your flowre into your melted
lard, seeth it well, but have a care it stick not to the pan, mix some onion with
it proportionably. When it is enough, put all with good broth, mushrums
and a drop of vinegar. Then after it hath boiled with its seasoning, pass all
through the strainer and put it in a pot. When you will use it, you shall set it
upon warm embers for to thicken or allay your sauces.4

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French cooks recognize three stages of roux browning: white (in which
the flour is cooked, without color, in clarified butter), blond (cooked in but-
ter until it’s a pale golden color), and brown (cooked in butter or other fat
until light brown). In Louisiana, Cajun cooks have a fourth category; their
dark brown roux is much darker than their French forebears would ever
make. Cajun roux has a very different flavor (because of complex Maillard
reactions that are possible because the use of oil permits higher temperatures
than butter), but it also has reduced thickening power. That’s because the
extended cooking time breaks much of the starch into simple sugars, which
are then turned into a host of different compounds, none of which form gels.
As a rule, the darker the roux, the more that is needed to achieve the same
viscosity as can be obtained from a lighter roux.
A simple starch-thickened example, from continental French cuisine,
is sauce poivrade. Flour is stirred into hot mirepoix, much as one would
do in making gumbo, but wine (and a little vinegar) moistens the mass, to
which a lot of black pepper is added. This should not be confused with the
sauce for steak au poivre. In that case, steak, heavily crusted with coarse
black pepper, is sautéed and removed from the pan, in which chopped
shallots are cooked; then the pan is deglazed with a bit of brandy, and
butter is stirred in at the end (consequently, the sauce for steak au poivre
is not a gel; it’s an emulsion).
Cooks in Louisiana have other thickeners in their arsenal beyond the
various shades of roux; okra provides additional polysaccharide-enhanced
viscosity when cooked in aqueous foods. Some gumbos use filé powder
(derived from leaves and cambium of Sassafras trees, Sassafras albidum) to
“tighten” their sauce. It had been used as a thickener by indigenous Native
Americans long before the Cajuns arrived. Note Miss Leslie’s charming
spelling error in this mid-nineteenth-century recipe:

Historic Recipe: Filet Gumbo

Cut up a pair of fine plump fowls into pieces, as when carving. Lay them in
a pan of cold water, till all the blood is drawn out. Put into a pot, two large
table-spoonfuls of lard, and set it over the fire. When the lard has come to
a boil, put in the chickens with an onion finely minced. Dredge them well
with flour, and season slightly with salt and pepper; and, if you like it, a little

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chopped marjoram. Pour on it two quarts of boiling water. Cover it, and let it
simmer slowly for three hours. Then stir into it two heaped tea-spoonfuls of
sassafras powder. Afterwards, let it stew five or six minutes longer, and then
send it to table in a deep dish; having a dish of boiled rice to be eaten with it
by those who like rice.
This gumbo will be much improved by stewing with it three or four thin
slices of cold boiled ham, in which case omit the salt in the seasoning. When-
ever cold ham is an ingredient in any dish, no other salt is required.
A dozen fresh oysters and their liquor, added to the stew about half an
hour before it is taken up, will also be an improvement.
If you cannot conveniently obtain sassafras-powder, stir the gumbo fre-
quently with a stick of sassafras root.
This is a genuine southern receipt. Filet gumbo may be made of any sort of
poultry, or of veal, lamb, venison, or kid.5

In the United States, we have two distinct types of “gravy.” Italian Ameri-
cans, especially those who live on the East Coast and trace their ancestry
to Sicily, make a sauce they call “gravy,” but it is actually a tomato sauce,
usually enriched by several different meats and often served on weekends or
holidays. That is not the kind of gravy we’re discussing at the moment. In
America, most of the sauces we call “gravy” are starch thickened, though the
preferred forms of starch (it’s not always flour), liquid, garnish, and fat vary
considerably from region to region.
Most gravies are based on flour that is browned in residual cooking fat, then
combined with water or stock. They are commonly garnished with mush-
rooms or giblets (bits of cooked liver from the chicken or turkey the gravy will
accompany). There are, naturally, a great many exceptions to that pattern.
Southern red-eye gravy, served with country ham, is made by stirring
flour into the fat that is left in the skillet after frying the ham. Once the flour
has cooked, the pan is deglazed with leftover coffee, plus a little brown
sugar to temper the bitter coffee and salty fried ham. In Louisiana, a varia-
tion of red-eye gravy is made with slow-cooked beef, and the coffee will, as
likely as not, contain chicory. A Texan variant of Louisiana red-eye might
be sweetened with honey instead of brown sugar and brightened with lime
juice and chile.
Some regional gravies use milk as the fluid component. The most un-
usual one, said to have been a favorite of Elvis Presley,6 is chocolate gravy.

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Cook cocoa powder and flour in milk (rather like a thin pudding), and then
enrich with butter and garnish with crumbled cooked bacon. First created
in the Appalachian Mountains and the hills of the Ozarks, this unlikely mé-
lange is poured over hot buttermilk biscuits.
When Texans pan-fry pounded and breaded pieces of beef to make
their beloved chicken-fried steaks, they’ll add flour and lots of black pep-
per to the crust that is left in the pan, then stir in milk to make a white—
“cream”—gravy. Southern fried chicken is sometimes served with a simi-
lar gravy made with the residue of chicken fat and crispy bits of breading
left in the pan. No diner or truck stop in the South could hope to stay
in business if it didn’t offer a breakfast (served twenty-four hours a day)
of biscuits smothered in a milk-based gravy made in the pan used to fry
country sausage. It must be redolent of sage and black pepper and studded
with little bits of browned forcemeat. Added cayenne pepper makes this
sausage gravy (also known as sawmill gravy) spicier. In northern Georgia,
a local variant of sausage gravy employs both bacon and sausage. This
darker sauce is called “combination gravy.” Individual cooks vary basic
sausage gravy by substituting heavy cream for milk or adding Worcester-
shire sauce or Tabasco. New Englanders make their milk gravy by sub-
stituting salt pork for sausage. Midwestern milk gravy replaces the meats
listed above with ground beef and might be “beefed up” with bottled steak
sauce—A.1. or Worcestershire—and/or beef bouillon.
In parts of the South, bacon drippings provide the fat for gravy, which
might be made with buttermilk or sweet milk, but occasionally ordinary
flour is replaced with cornmeal as the thickener. This sauce verges on gruel
and is sometimes served as a dish on its own—rather than as an accompa-
niment. A Texan take on cornmeal-thickened gravy might start with lard,
then add masa (finely ground hominy, normally used to make tortillas and
tamales) and the kinds of spices one would expect in chili con carne—chili
powder, cumin, garlic, and oregano—moistened with enough chicken stock
to reach the desired consistency.7
Much further north, across the Canadian border in fact, light brown
gravy—homemade, or straight from a jar, or even made with powdered
gravy mix—plays a starring rôle in the traditional (if not quite national) dish:
poutine. Beginning in francophone Canada (but now found almost through-
out the country), plates of pommes frites—French fries—are topped with

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hot gravy and cheese curds. There were, at one time, many types of poutine
in Quebec, but the term is now reserved for the iconic fries-gravy-cheese-
curd dish. There are many hypotheses about the etymology of the dish’s
name, but I suspect that it is a snide reference to a traditional—and more
expensive—dish from the Mediterranean Côte d’Azur. La poutine is baby
anchovies or sardines crisply fried into something that resembles the much
cheaper fried potatoes of Canada. The potato-gravy-cheese-curd dish has
spawned countless variations in Canada and around the world.
One of them, from English-speaking Ottawa, is an affront to the quint-
essentially British sweet-savory distinction. Sugar shack poutine tops the
basic dish with bacon, maple syrup, and sausage. Another—perhaps the
most linguistically incomprehensible—variation comes from Quebec itself:
poutine Chinoise (literally, “Chinese poutine”), a plate of fries smothered in
a mixture of brown gravy and ragù bolognese.
Commercial canned gravy comes in two basic forms: a brown one, labeled
“beef,” and a yellowish one, called “chicken.” Both are likely thickened with
modified food starch instead of flour. Modified starch uses a number of
chemicals, such as aluminum sulfate (alum) and/or sodium hydroxide (lye,
used to pre-gelatinize starch8), among others. The flavor of these canned
sauces usually has its umami-factor boosted by monosodium glutamate
(MSG), and artificial colorings and flavorings are likely among their ingredi-
ents. None of these compounds, used in moderation, is harmful. However,
reading the labels on the cans is likely to adversely affect one’s appetite.
Some spices work like flour to thicken sauces; the individual particles
swell by absorbing some of the surrounding liquid. Ground dried chiles
thicken moles (though ground nuts, seeds, and even bits of tortillas are cer-
tainly involved as well), in part because their particles absorb liquid but also
because they contain gel-producing pectin. “Fenugreek seeds exude a gum
that gives a gelatinous consistency”9 to dishes that incorporate curry powder.
The word “pectin” is derived from a Greek word meaning “clotted” or
“congealed,” which is hardly appetizing to modern ears. This is especially
ironic since pectin-thickened solutions are often perfectly transparent, yield-
ing clear and richly colored sauces.
Pectin is a compound that occurs naturally in the cell walls of various
fruits. It stiffens the cell walls and binds the cells together, creating a firm or
crisp texture. As fruit ripens, the enzyme pectinase gradually breaks down

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the pectin (in overripening, the process has gone too far, making the fruit
unpleasantly soft and mushy). When pectin-rich fruits (especially if slightly
underripe) are cooked, molecules of sugar-like substances (saccharides) link
themselves into long chains (polymers), forming a gel. Citrus marmalades
and canned cranberry sauce are perfect examples of jellies whose viscosity
has been enhanced by the presence of pectin.
Such jellies are sometimes served as condiments, or they can be added to
pan sauces, instead of starch or butter, to thicken and add flavor. Red cur-
rant jelly, for example, is often used in pan sauces for roasted meats: goose,
lamb, turkey, or venison. Its tart flavor complements, or civilizes, the some-
times gamy flavor of the aged meat. The sauce is made by melting the jelly
together with mustard and/or rosemary. Variations—such as Cumberland
sauce or Oxford sauce—might be thinned with port. Americans’ cranberry
jelly as a companion to turkey is probably an adaptation of red currant jelly,
using more readily available New World fruit. Homemade cranberry sauce,
made with berries, sugar, orange juice and zest, and typical medieval sweet
spices (allspice, cinnamon, clove), thickens as it cooks due to pectin that is
naturally present in the berries.
Cranberry sauce and the mint jelly often served with lamb are sweet-
savory combinations that are throwbacks to medieval culinary practices.
They tend to be served on special occasions, like holiday dinners, when old
traditions control the menu.
What we call “starch” is actually two different kinds of starch: amylose
and amylopectin. Amylose does not form gels when cooked, but amylo-
pectin does (as the “pectin” part of the name suggests). Depending on its
source, the “starch” might contain one or both in varying proportions,
which affects its properties. Rice, for example, contains both, but different
varieties have them in different proportions. Short-grain rices (like arborio
or carnaroli) are largely composed of amylopectin, so they produce the
creamy sauce in risottos. Long-grain rices are mostly composed of amylose,
so they are not sticky when cooked; they could be used to thicken a sauce
but only in the way a purée acts (increasing viscosity with suspended par-
ticles). Such sauces will not be as smooth or translucent as those made with
short-grain rice.
Other starches employed as thickeners for sauces include arrowroot,
corn, kudzu, potato, tapioca, and wheat.

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Nineteenth-century label for a can of jellied cranberries. Source: Public domain

Arrowroot powder is extracted from the rhizomes (nontuberous, usually

horizontal, swellings of the rootstocks) of various species of tropical plants.
West Indian arrowroot (Maranta arundinacea) is the main source, but
many other plants yield similar starch and have similar names. As it contains
no gluten, it is kosher and suitable for those who suffer from celiac disease.
It forms gels that are more transparent than those provided by corn starch.
Corn starch yields an inexpensive translucent gel when combined with
water in a slurry then heated. In 1837, Alfred Bird created an eggless custard
substitute using corn starch and milk. Its use is so widespread that many in
England (and the former British colonies) don’t even know that true cus-
tards contain egg proteins.
Kudzu starch, also known as Japanese arrowroot, forms stronger gels
than most other starches, so little is needed to thicken a sauce; a concentra-

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tion of less than 7 percent is sufficient. Kudzu gels are shiny, translucent,
and almost transparent, which makes for a nice presentation in Chinese
sauces. The only drawback is that kudzu starch is more expensive than
competing starches, like those from corn or arrowroot.
Potato starch has some useful properties; it remains clear through long
cooking, which means commercial sauces that must be subjected to high
canning temperatures will still look good (that’s why it appears in the ingre-
dient lists on so many labels). Like arrowroot, it is an acceptable replace-
ment for wheat in special diets (such as kosher or gluten free).
Tapioca starch, which is washed from the roots of cassava or yucca (Mani-
hot esculenta), is sometimes mistakenly identified as arrowroot or as Brazilian
arrowroot. It contains 70–85 percent amylopectin, so it forms a transparent
gel, but one that doesn’t stand up to intense reheating (so it’s not used as much
as potato starch in commercial applications that require canning).
Wheat starch (as in flour) does create gels, but they’re not as strong as
those made with corn starch and are considerably less transparent. It is the
least expensive form of starch, which is the main reason it is found in so
many traditional sauce recipes. Wheat starch is best used in gravies, where
opacity is not detrimental. As it’s impossible to remove every trace of pro-
tein (gluten) in the manufacture of wheat starch, it is not suitable for kosher
(Passover) or gluten-free diets.
Unlike gelatin, the gels formed from many starches do not melt evenly
when reheated after being cooled. When individual starch grains cook,
they break open, and their starch leaks into the solution. When such a
sauce cools, the starch molecules crystallize into a form that is less soluble.
Reheating generally yields sauces with an uneven texture that most people
find unappetizing. Commercial sauces employ a number of additives (and
different starches from those available to home cooks) that avoid the prob-
lems caused by reheating. Modified food starches, as described above, are
among their additives, as are carageenans (there are three varieties, derived
from different species of seaweed, each having different properties), which,
like pectin, are polysaccharides.
So, the basic principle by which gels add viscosity to liquids is by creating
a matrix that slows the movement of water molecules. There are other tools
available to the saucier, and the next chapter—on emulsions—looks at one
of the most significant methods, albeit a more technically demanding one.

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EMULSIONS

S uspensions, as we’ve seen, consist of tiny particles surrounded by liquid,

while gels are thickened by having their liquid components trapped in-
side particles of starch or held together in a matrix of protein. The principle
is the same: increase viscosity by interfering with the liquid’s freedom of
movement, its fluidity.
Emulsions achieve the same thickening in a more sophisticated and
correspondingly fragile manner. They combine two liquids that ordinarily
don’t mix. We often describe incompatible things (or people, or ideas) as
being “like water and oil”; yet a merger of the two is exactly what we achieve
when we make an emulsion.
Our word “emulsion” is etymologically descended from a seventeenth-
century French word, émulgêre (literally, “to milk out”). Whole milk begins
as a natural emulsion of butterfat suspended in whey (a solution of dissolved
sugars and salts, with suspended micelles—tiny particles—of the protein
casein). However, if left to stand, the cream will separate out (cream has a
higher butterfat content), and since—counterintuitively—fat is lighter than
water, it rises to the top.1 In homogenized milk, fat globules have been
broken into fragments so tiny that they can’t coalesce to form large enough
droplets to float to the surface.
Like suspensions, emulsions tend to be opaque, or at least translucent.
That’s because their tiny droplets of suspended components have different
refractive indexes, so they scatter any light that attempts to pass through
them. Some emulsions, like milk, are completely white because of they contain

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suspended casein molecules as well. Nonfat milk looks “thinner”—is not as

opaque as whole milk—because its light-scattering fat globules have been re-
moved. It also feels thinner, less viscous, because that emulsified fat isn’t there
anymore—it’s mostly the aqueous phase of milk, practically whey.
Butter, by the way, is not actually a solid; it’s a very thick emulsion—but
it’s the reverse of most other emulsions. A miniscule amount of watery
whey is suspended in a matrix of solidified butterfat. The churning process
forces the cold fat globules to bump into each other, allowing them to stick
together. This traps some of the watery liquid in the tiny spaces between
them. The butter is then paddled to squeegee out most of the whey. The
tiny amount of water trapped in the butter provides the steam pressure nec-
essary to make puff pastries—or batters containing sugar and butter creamed
together—rise as they bake.
A natural emulsion, like cream, can be thickened by carefully heating
it. Gradually removing some of the water in the emulsion yields an unctu-
ous sauce, reduced cream, which can be flavored in any number of ways.
Remember, however, that emulsions are fragile; if one tries to reduce cream
too much, there won’t be enough water left to maintain the emulsion, leaving
only butterfat (ghee). If you try to reheat a dish that has been sauced with
reduced cream, expect to be disappointed; the fat will separate out of the
delicate emulsion, and the once creamy white sauce will be nothing but an
oily residue of butterfat.
Various peppercorn sauces can be prepared by simmering the pepper in
cream as it reduces. Black and green peppercorns are classic, but in the late
1970s pink peppercorns (which are not related to Piper nigrum but are the
berries of an invasive vine called Schinus molle) became briefly fashionable.
They lend a faintly mint-like quality to the sauce’s piquancy. An experiment
with Australian native pepper (Drimys lanceolata) created a delicate mauve-
colored cream sauce with heat that came on gradually, increasing beyond
that of black and white peppers without their faintly resinous aroma.
Any time we wish to make an emulsion, such as mayonnaise or vinai-
grette, we beat the mixture to form these tiny globules and disburse one
liquid into the other. Sometimes an emulsifier is required to help the process
along. A small amount of mustard, for example, aids in emulsifying vinai-
grettes and mayonnaise.

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Historic Recipe: Fanny Farmer’s Mayonnaise Dressing I

Ingredients
1 tsp. mustard
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. powdered sugar
Few grains cayenne
2 egg yolks
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
2 Tbsp. vinegar
1½ cups olive oil

Method
Mix dry ingredients, add egg yolks, and when well mixed add one-half tea-
spoon of vinegar. Add oil gradually, at first drop by drop, and stir constantly.
As mixture thickens, thin with vinegar or lemon juice. Add oil and vinegar
or lemon juice alternately, until all is used, stirring or beating constantly. If
oil is added too rapidly, dressing will have a curdled appearance. A smooth
consistency may be restored by taking yolk of another egg and adding curdled
mixture slowly to it. It is desirable to have bowl containing mixture placed
in a larger bowl of crushed ice, to which a small quantity of water has been
added. Olive oil for making Mayonnaise should always be thoroughly chilled.
A silver fork, wire whisk, small wooden spoon, or Dover Egg-beater may be
used as preferred. If one has a Keystone Egg-beater, dressing may be made
very quickly by its use. Mayonnaise should be stiff enough to hold its shape.
It soon liquefies when added to meat or vegetables; therefore it should be
added just before serving time.2

Lecithin, which is found in egg yolks, works in an ingenious fashion:

each molecule of lecithin (or certain other proteins, such as the casein in
milk) has different regions that are attracted and attach selectively (based
on their electrical charge) to the molecules of water- and oil-based compo-
nents. This double nature of lecithin allows it to dissolve as easily in water
as in oil. By the way, one reason milk is such a stable emulsion is that all
of its casein molecules have the same charge, so they repel each other.
Emulsifiers also form thin layers around the fat globules, making it more
difficult for them to reconnect.

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A basic mayonnaise incorporates three elements: oil, egg yolk, and lemon
juice or vinegar. Slowly beating oil into the egg yolk (which is 50% water) and
lemon juice (more water), the oil breaks down into tiny droplets that become
suspended in the yolk and lemon juice due to the emulsifying agent lecithin
in the egg yolk. This phosphorus containing molecule has long “tails” that are
lipophilic (fat loving) and hydrophilic (water loving) heads. The tails burrow
into the oil and the positive and negatively charged heads attract the water.
These, as you might surmise, are the go-between that attracts and firmly
binds the water and oil to form the creamy, much-loved sauce.
Mayonnaise can suspend approximately eight times the oil in relation to
the water content. At the molecular level it is the tiny oil droplets that are
enshrouded in a thin sheen of water that has taken place.3

The two liquids in an emulsion are generally described as “phases”: the

continuous phase, which is usually aqueous, and the dispersed phase, a
lipid. The lipid could be oil, as in mayonnaise, or it could be a melted fat,
like the butter in hollandaise. In a sense, emulsions are like solutions, but
they don’t involve dissolvable solutes. Instead, they play on molecular forces
to keep bits of insoluble material sufficiently separated so that they can’t join
together (whereupon their mass would become great enough for gravity to
force them to separate).
Stable emulsions can be made when the ratio of dispersed to continu-
ous is about 3:1 (which is why most recipes for vinaigrettes call for that
balance; mayonnaise achieves a higher ratio of oil to water because it
includes the emulsifier in egg yolks). The Greek version of vinaigrette,
ladolemono, is much lighter. It’s not a salad dressing; it’s a quick sauce to
pour over grilled seafood, such as branzino, octopus, shrimp, or squid.
It’s both lighter and tarter than other vinaigrettes because it replaces vin-
egar with lemon juice and uses equal amounts of oil and juice (instead of
the usual 3:1 ratio).
In the making of any of these sauces, care must be taken to add the dis-
persed fat slowly, so that it has a chance to be distributed throughout the
water-based liquid. Adding fat too quickly will allow its globules to rejoin,
making the sauce “break” into its components rather than form the smooth,
thick sauce that we crave.
Many of these freshly made sauces are fragile, temporary things that tend
to revert to their original liquids. If they become too hot or too cold, or

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if they get out of balance—by losing some water through evaporation, for
example—they will break (separate into their original components). Mayon-
naise, however, is different; it’s what is known as a permanent emulsion.
The stabilizing effect of its emulsifying agent (the lecithin in the egg yolks)
prevents it from breaking. Only if subjected to very high heat, as in cook-
ing, can mayonnaise revert to its oily origins. Vinaigrettes—other than a few
heavily stabilized commercial bottled sauces—require frequent shaking or
whisking to keep their components from separating.
Since 1933, a mayonnaise-like sauce—which can’t legally be called “may-
onnaise”4 because it contains less than the US Department of Agriculture’s
minimum of 65 percent oil—has divided consumers into the sandwich-
making equivalent of the Hatfields and the McCoys. Miracle Whip jars,
originally labeled “salad dressing,” now say only “dressing”—perhaps to
suggest that the sauce can be used in more than just salads. It is produced
by Kraft (which also produces the competing Kraft Real Mayonnaise) and
was originally intended as a less expensive alternative to mayonnaise. How-
ever, many people—especially in the Midwest and Southwest5—have come
to prefer its sweeter taste, while “real mayonnaise performs better in the
Southeast[ern markets].”6 The “real” mayo is flavored with garlic, onions,
paprika, and sugar (none of which would ever be found in French mayon-
naise). Miracle Whip is similar but substitutes high-fructose corn syrup for
the sugar and maintains the mayo-like texture—despite its reduced fat—with
corn starch. The presence of corn starch reveals another difference between
mayonnaise and salad dressing: the latter is cooked, while the former is not
(if it wasn’t cooked, that starch wouldn’t gel).
Kraft and competitors (such as Hellmann’s/Best) have begun marketing
mayonnaise made with olive oil instead of soy oil because customers per-
ceive it as a healthier alternative. These “new” versions of mayonnaise are, in
a sense, atavistic, since mayonnaise was originally made with olive oil (which
was available in Europe long before soy oil was).
The Japanese have adopted, and adapted, commercial mayonnaise to
suit their needs. Kewpie, a leading brand there, employs the same soy oil
that is found in Western jarred mayonnaise but changes a few other details.
The Japanese only use the yolks, not whole eggs, so their mayo is a deeper
yellow. They alter the flavor by adding mirin (making it a little sweeter) and
MSG (boosting its umami) and spice it up with a little hot sauce. The now

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Trendy mayonnaise jar: it not only uses olive oil but also boasts cage-free eggs—
healthy and guilt-free! Source: Gary Allen

ubiquitous spicy tuna roll sushi would not exist if mayonnaise had not found
its way into Japanese kitchens.
Certain pan sauces, such as beurre blanc, make use of butterfat’s ability to
become creamy when emulsified. An aqueous solution is first made by deglaz-
ing the pan with wine, then reducing the liquid to concentrate the meaty fla-
vors from the fond. The fond is the dissolved crust that forms in the bottom of
a pan. It is, in essence, a solid mass of flavor formed by the evaporation of meat
juices, converted by Maillard reactions into a concentrated layer of umami.
Many home cooks hate seeing that crust, thinking only of the additional time
they’ll have to spend scrubbing it away after dinner. Good cooks love it;

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deglazing simultaneously cleans the pan and rescues rich flavor that would
otherwise—literally—go down the drain. Once the fond is deglazed with white
wine and reduced to just a few tablespoons, chunks of cold butter are whisked
in quickly (monter au beurre) to thicken and enrich the sauce. Beurre rouge, as
might be suspected, is the same except for the use of red wine instead of white.
These butter sauces tend to separate, but keeping them warm, not hot—in
a thermos or surrounded by a hot-water bath known as a bain marie—will
extend their lives. Basic beurre blanc sauce can be customized by altering the
liquid phase (such as by replacing part of the white wine with lemon juice) or
adding a garnish (like tomate concasée7). Such sauces can also be enriched by
whisking in a bit of crème fraîche at the last moment.
Sauce bourguignonne is a variant of beurre rouge. After meat is sautéed,
the pan is deglazed with red wine, together with minced shallots and a bou-
quet garni of bay leaf, parsley, and thyme tied in a little bundle. The liquid
is then strained and reduced. Sauce espagnole or a little demi-glace and a
sprinkling of cayenne are added next. Finally, cold butter is whisked in to
form a luscious emulsion.
Liaison is French for that which binds together, or unifies, disparate
ingredients—like oil and water—to form an emulsion. Heavy cream, which
is already an emulsion, can be added to produce a liaison (the cream is
sometimes beaten together with egg yolks first so the resulting rich liaison
has some of the characteristics of a thin custard; sauce allemande begins
with a velouté made with veal stock). Liaisons can also be made using
techniques other than emulsification—such as by creating a suspension
of puréed vegetables or lobster roe or thickening by producing a starch-
based gel—but only the French could come up with a term that so poeti-
cally marries cuisine and romance.
Beurre noisette is butter that has been slowly heated until it separates into
butterfat and milk solids. As it heats, the solids begin to brown and form
fragrant nutty compounds (hence the noisette in the name). At that point, it
makes a classic sauce for seafood, especially skate. If the beurre noisette is al-
lowed to cook further, it becomes beurre noir. At that point, cooking must be
stopped, usually by adding lemon juice or vinegar. Meunière sauce is beurre
noir with lemon juice and minced parsley; it becomes meunière picatta when
capers are added or amandine when toasted almonds are the garnish. All of
these variations are standard toppings for fried (and breaded) seafood.

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As we have seen with zabaglione, carefully heating egg proteins coagu-

lates them, forming custards. “Carefully” is the key concept, because if these
proteins are heated too quickly or at too high a temperature, they curdle into
insoluble “scrambled eggs,” which do not make for an appealing sauce. Ex-
amples of egg-thickened sauces include hollandaise (it’s the only nonstarch
sauce to make it onto Auguste Escoffier’s list of mother sauces), Italian
carbonara, Italian American Alfredo, and Japanese teppanyaki (which is a
gently cooked oil and egg yolk emulsion—sort of a cross between mayon-
naise and hollandaise, with an Asian twist).
Cooked egg-based emulsions aren’t limited to savory dishes. Crème an-
glaise (flavored with vanilla) and zabaglione (flavored with marsala wine) are
fluid cooked custards that serve as dessert sauces—teetering precipitously
over the gap between the liquid and solid states. Crème pâtissière—the fill-
ing for profiteroles, éclairs, and countless other pastries—is basically crème
anglaise made a bit more viscous by cooking some flour or corn starch in it.
Ice cream is merely frozen crème anglaise, with air suspended in it by vigor-
ous churning as it freezes. By adding whipped cream to crème anglaise, one
gets crème légère or—by incorporating gelatin—crème anglaise collée.
When preparing any of these delicate, custardy sauces, it’s essential that
temperatures be controlled (between 156°F/70°C and 185°F/85°C), with
the highest temperatures resulting in the thickest sauces. However, the risk
of producing scrambled eggs, instead of smooth sauce, becomes greater as
cooking temperatures rise.
Cooking lemon juice and egg yolks in broth produces Greek avgolemono
(and similar sauces around the eastern Mediterranean, such as Israeli agris-
tada). Greeks and Turks don’t agree on much, but their foods share many
similarities. Turkish terbiye, for example, is much like avgolemono.
Among the basic emulsion-based sauces, vinaigrettes are probably the
most familiar. They first appeared in English print—appropriately—in John
Evelyn’s 1699 book Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets. It was a most fitting
title, considering the acidic nature of so many salad dressings.

Historic Recipe: Cucumbers in Vinaigrette

20. Cucumber. Cucumis; tho’ very cold and moist, the most approved Sallet
alone, or in Composition, of all the Vinaigrets, to sharpen the Appetite, and
cool the Liver, &c. if rightly prepar’d; that is, by rectifying the vulgar Mistake

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of altogether extracting the Juice, in which it should rather be soak’d: Nor

ought it to be over Oyl’d, too much abating of its grateful Acidity, and palling
the Taste from a contrariety of Particles: Let them therefore be pared, and cut
in thin Slices, with a Clove or two of Onion to correct the Crudity, macerated
in the Juice, often turn’d and moderately drain’d. Others prepare them, by
shaking the Slices between two Dishes, and dress them with very little Oyl,
well beaten, and mingled with the Juice of Limon, Orange, or Vinegar, Salt
and Pepper. Some again, (and indeed the most approv’d) eat them as soon as
they are cut, retaining their Liquor, which being exhausted (by the former
Method) have nothing remaining in them to help the Concoction. Of old they
boil’d the Cucumber, and paring off the Rind, eat them with Oyl, Vinegar, and
Honey; Sugar not being so well known. Lastly, the Pulp in Broth is greatly
refreshing, and may be mingl’d in most Sallets, without the least damage,
contrary to the common Opinion; it not being long, since Cucumber, however
dress’d, was thought fit to be thrown away, being accounted little better than
Poyson. Tavernier tells us, that in the Levant, if a Child cry for something
to Eat, they give it a raw Cucumber instead of Bread. The young ones may
be boil’d in White-Wine. The smaller sort (known by the name of Gerkems)
muriated with the Seeds of Dill, and the Mango Pickle are for the Winter.8

In the 1970s raspberry vinaigrette began to appear on restaurant menus

everywhere. To some extent, it’s still present. The simplest version is really
just raspberry-infused vinegar and oil (plus the usual salt and pepper). A
better version—one that qualifies as a composite sauce—uses a purée of fresh
berries, two kinds of vinegar (balsamic and cider), mild-flavored oil, some
mustard, and a little sugar to counter all that acidity. It’s an emulsion and a
suspension, plus a few different solutions.
In vinaigrettes and mayonnaise, mustard aids in emulsification, but egg
yolks, lecithin, and mustard are not the only emulsifiers that uncooked
emulsions utilize. Garlic, if smashed into sufficiently tiny fragments, per-
forms admirably in that role. Accordingly, it is the basis of several garlic
sauces from diverse cuisines. Spain’s classic aioli is perhaps the simplest.
It is nothing but an emulsion of puréed raw garlic and olive oil, pounded
together in a mortar and pestle. It needs nothing else, but egg yolk is some-
times added. Garlic-favored mayonnaise may be called “aioli,” but, while
tasty, it’s not true aioli (though I’m certain that Provençal cooks would beg
to differ). TV chef Guy Fieri slathers his secret “donkey sauce” on many

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dishes in his various restaurants. He recently confessed that it’s nothing

more than an egg-based aioli.9
Aioli makes a more grown-up dip for French fries than ketchup, at least if
not consumed before going out on a date. Garlic mayonnaise, rendered pink
with smoked paprika, is so good with French fries (or roasted wedges of
potato) that even the idea of ketchup is easily forgotten. In Egypt and other
parts of the Middle East, toum—another eggless aioli-like sauce, made with
mild sunflower seed oil instead of olive oil—enhances French fries (as well
as sandwiches of fried chicken).
Romanian mujdei, like aioli, is traditionally made of garlic pounded
in oil (though, unlike in Spain, sunflower oil is preferred in Romania).
Like aioli, it occasionally includes other ingredients besides oil and garlic;
vinegar and cream are common variations. Mujdei is served with many
foods—fish, meats, and potatoes—and no doubt aids in discouraging visits
from vampires.
Elsewhere in the eastern Mediterranean—in what used to be called the
Levant—aioli ingredients are pounded with salt and lemon juice (and some-
times mint and/or cayenne) in wooden mortars and pestles to make toumya.
Toum is Arabic for garlic. Toumya serves as a dip and a spread for sand-
wiches (like kebabs, shawarma, or falafel, on pita or similar flatbreads—or
just for the bread alone) in Egypt, Iraq, and Lebanon. The emulsion can be
maintained merely through the vigorous pounding, but emulsifiers (like egg
or lecithin) are sometimes added as well.
Italy’s agliata is an emulsion of garlic and some vinegar-soaked bread,
whipped together with olive oil and thinned with hot chicken stock. The
fifteenth-century Martino of Como was a celebrity chef long before Antoine
Carême (Bartolomeo Sacchi, aka “Platina,” described him as the “prince
of cooks from whom I learned all about cooking”). The Eminent Maestro
Martino provided this recipe in his Libro de arte coquinaria:

Historic Recipe: Agliata Bianca (White Garlic Sauce)

Take well-blanched almonds and grind them, and about halfway through add
as much garlic as you like, and grind them well together adding a little cold
water so that they don’t become oily. Then take a piece of the inside of a loaf
of bread and soak it in meat or fish stock, according to the season; and this
garlic sauce can be served at any time, as you please.10

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Recipes for agliata in Piemonte add ground almonds or walnuts. The

nuts act as emulsifiers for many sauces. The use of ground nuts as emulsifi-
ers to thicken sauces is traditional in ancient Islamic recipes (as well as those
of nearby Christian countries, like Greece). Greek skordaliá (or skorthaliá)
beats garlic into oil as well. The Greek version of this sauce differs from the
Levantine toums by using full-flavored olive oil in place of the milder sun-
flower oil. Skordaliá’s viscosity is often maintained by adding puréed pota-
toes, ground almonds or walnuts, and even bread (it’s the culinary overkill
equivalent of wearing a belt and suspenders to hold up one’s pants).
Tarator is a slightly less garlic-forward sauce found in Albania, Bul-
garia, Greece, Macedonia, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey. Like skordaliá, it’s
mostly an emulsion of ground nuts (walnuts in Turkey, tahini in Lebanon
and Syria, though some places replace the tahini with yogurt), olive oil, and
lemon juice. It’s usually thickened with some breadcrumbs that are first
soaked in water. It’s almost infinitely variable, with garnishes of cumin, dill,
parsley, oregano or other herbs, and even cucumber—which, in yogurt ver-
sions, begins to resemble the tzatziki of Greece. Tarators range in viscosity
from thin soups to thicker dips to almost paste-like condiments to be spread
on sandwiches.
Georgian satsivi—pounded walnuts and garlic emulsified in diluted
vinegar—serves as a dip for fried fish and meats. A slightly different ver-
sion, called bazhe, switches pomegranate juice for the vinegar. Satsivi and
bazhe are similar to hummus (except hummus substitutes lemon for vinegar
or pomegranate juice, swaps the sesame paste tahini for walnuts, and adds
protein in the form of puréed chickpeas). Maafe is a spicy West African
sauce, thickened by ground peanuts and a little tomato paste (and some-
times puréed sweet potatoes). Moambe, the sauce for Congolese muamba
nsusu, is like maafe but includes emulsified palm oil and even more chile.
Bumbu pecel, a saté-like peanut-butter-thickened sauce from Indonesia, is
much spicier than its African cousins. Peanuts and peanut oil are emulsified
with ground chiles, makrut lime leaves, jaggery, and the ginger-like galangal
(Kaempferia galanga).
Nuts function as thickeners in a couple of ways: “When nuts are ground
into ‘butters,’ the oil provides the fluid continuous phase that lubricates the
particles of cell walls and proteins. But more of the time, nuts are mixed
with other ingredients, including liquids, so they become part of a complex

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suspension and help thicken with both their dry particles and with their oil,
which becomes emulsified into tiny droplets.”11
The fondue-like dipping sauce bagna cauda does not contain nuts
(though it sometimes includes oils pressed from hazelnuts or walnuts). The
hot emulsion is typically formed of olive oil and puréed anchovies and garlic.
Bagna cauda is a cold-weather alternative to the uncooked dips that are usu-
ally served with crudités.
Commercial jarred sauces avoid “separation anxiety” by using chemical
emulsifiers and stabilizers (and by adding starches and/or guar gum, locust
bean gum, or xanthan gum as thickeners—as will be explained further when
we discuss the next category of mother sauces: cultures). Some of these
products are also employed by molecular gastronomers (along with a modi-
fied soy protein called Versawhip and the colloidal compound methylcel-
lulose F50) to produce stable foams of otherwise impractical liquids. Most
of these emulsifiers are used for the standard purpose—allowing oil and
water to mix—but one fascinating compound (a monoglyceride emulsifier
marketed as Glycerin Flakes) has an additional property: It is only soluble in
lipids, not aqueous solutions. Hence, to form a typical emulsion, it is added
first to the oil (the reverse of most emulsifying techniques). Still more unusu-
ally, it allows lipids to foam. A creative saucier can use it to make a mousse
of flavored oil or simply thicken it to sauce consistency without needing to
resort to some form of starch.
So we’ve seen some of the tricks that sauciers have employed to convert
flavorful solutions into luxuriously thick sauces. As it turns out, mother
nature has already come up with some methods that allow sauces to thicken
themselves with practically no effort on the part of the saucier. The next
chapter on cultured sauces addresses them.

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CULTURED SAUCES

W e’ve seen that certain proteins are soluble and can be manipulated
with heat to yield gels that thicken liquids into sauces with a rich
quality that some have called “mouth-feel.” We’ve also looked at partially
dehydrated mixtures, like reduced cream, that move emulsified fat globules
closer to each other to create a denser, richer sauce. However, other pro-
teins, those that are not so soluble, can be used to achieve the same richness,
albeit by a different means.
The molecules of protein that are suspended in a liquid can be made to
change shape and attach themselves together into a viscous matrix by vari-
ous means. Called denaturing, this process can be caused by heat or by the
molecules’ chemical environment. Their chemistry could be altered directly
by adding an acid (like vinegar or lemon juice) or by allowing some bio-
logical activity—fermentation—to create the required acidic environment.
Sometimes these methods are used in combination.
The primary source of proteins in cultured products is dairy. The pro-
teins in milk are coagulated by lactobacteria and heat to form yogurts and
similar cultured products (commercial buttermilk, for example). Denatured
dairy products are the basis of many sauces (though, with the exception of
crème fraîche, not in classic French cookery). They are common elsewhere,
such as in Indian raita and Greek tzatziki.
The most basic form of cultured dairy product is soured milk. Milk will
naturally go sour on its own, given adequate time, temperature, and the
presence of acid-producing bacteria. Various species of lactobacilli—from

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the genus Lactococcus or Lactobacillus—feed on sugar (lactose) in the milk

and produce lactic acid as a waste product. The lactic acid in turn denatures
(curdles) the milk’s proteins. The residual acid has a sour flavor, and the
denatured proteins thicken the milk. The degree of denaturing and amount
of residual moisture determine the viscosity and tartness of the cultured
product—ranging from slightly thickened buttermilk to hard cheese.
While milk can be easily soured by biologic activity, it takes some time.
Consequently, commercially produced soured milk is usually rushed along
with the aid of other acids, among them acetic acid (found in vinegar), hex-
anedioic acid (found in beets), citric acid (such as lemon juice), fumaric acid
(a synthetic substance that also occurs naturally in many fruits), glucodelta
lactone (a synthetic acid about one-third as sour as citric acid), hydrochloric
acid (much diluted), lactic acid (bypassing the need for bacteria), malic acid
(the source of the sour taste in green apples), phosphoric acid (extracted
from phosphate rocks and the source of tartness in soft drinks such as colas),
succinic acid (found in some fungi but synthesized from acetic acid), and
tartaric acid (cream of tartar, originally a by-product of wine fermentation
but now mostly synthetic).
Buttermilk was originally the liquid left behind when cultured cream
was churned into butter. It was tangy, slightly thickened, and practically
fat-free (unless tiny chips of butter were left floating in it). However, most
buttermilk today is not a by-product of butter production. It is simply milk
that has been inoculated and fermented with lactobacteria—hence it is called
“cultured buttermilk.” It is thicker, richer, and tangier than old-fashioned
buttermilk. Its lactic acid is useful in many culinary applications (such as
reacting with baking soda to leaven quick breads or pancakes and marinating
meats to tenderize them). Milk soured by any of the acids listed above can
be substituted for buttermilk in cooking. Perhaps buttermilk’s most familiar
role is as the source of thickness and sourness in ranch dressing for salads
(though its viscosity is also increased through the incorporation of sour
cream, mayonnaise, or yogurt).
Unlike buttermilk, crème fraîche is cultured cream instead of milk. The
bacteria used include Lactococcus cremoris, L. lactis, and L. lactis var. diacet-
ylactis. The natural product yields a smooth sauce when heated, but low-fat
versions (which have their viscosity altered by stabilizing starch or xanthan

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gum) will not. Full-fat (30 percent) crème fraîche is often used to finish sauces
(especially in the cooking of Normandy), providing a rich mouth-feel and
mild tartness. It is also added just before serving, as a kind of garnish, to sa-
vory dishes and desserts. This function is nearly identical to that of smetana,
as a garnish for Russian borscht, or crema, in Mexican cuisine.
Sour cream is very similar to crème fraîche but usually has a lower fat
content (18 to 20 percent), while the low-fat versions are only 14 percent
milk fat. The latter are made from a mixture of milk and cream and maintain
their viscosity with artificial thickeners, such as carrageenan, gelatin, guar
gum, or other starches. Rennet (a collective name for several enzymes derived
from the stomach linings of dairy animals, chief of which is chymosin)1 and/
or acids (citric acid or sodium citrate) can be added to assist the bacteria in
denaturing the cream’s proteins. Sour cream is not as completely fermented
as crème fraîche and would spoil easily if not protected by various preserva-
tives (commonly sodium phosphate, sodium citrate, calcium sulfate, and/or
potassium sorbate). Sour cream is essential to the cooking of central Europe
and Russia—it thickens the sauces in paprikash and Stroganoff dishes, as well
as some recipes for sauerbraten (though many use crushed gingersnap cook-
ies). Potato dumplings, in northern Germany, are often sauced with duckefett,
which sounds like “duck fat” but has nothing to do with that luxurious lipid.
Instead, it’s a mixture of cooked bacon and onions in a sour cream base.
In the United States, sour cream most often appears as a topping for
baked potatoes or as an ingredient in dips. The following recipe hardly
needs mentioning since it is absurdly easy and has been an American classic
since 1952, when a manufacturer of instant soups ran a contest to find new
uses for one of its products.

Historic Recipe: Lipton’s Onion Dip

Ingredients
2 cups sour cream
1 package Lipton’s Onion Soup Mix
½ cup mayonnaise (optional)

Method
Combine ingredients and refrigerate before serving.

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Little packets containing dehydrated buttermilk and seasonings convert

sour cream into ranch-flavored dip in the same manner as that of Lipton’s
now classic dip.
Other forms of sour cream include crema (Mexico and Central
America), mileram or pavlaka (Balkans), schmand (Germany), smântână
(Romania), smetana (Belarus, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Finland, Slove-
nia, Russia, and Ukraine), smietana (Poland), smotana (Slovakia), tejföl
(Hungary), and vrhnje (Croatia).2 The kaymak of Afghanistan, Central
Asia, Greece, India, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and parts of the Balkans is slightly
firmer and less tart than sour cream. It is made from cow, goat, sheep, or
water buffalo milk that has been reduced by long cooking before being
lightly fermented. In the Balkans, beef simmers in kaymak, or a dollop of
it melts atop patties of ground meat.
Unlike the dairy products just described, the clotted cream of the British
Isles is not fermented at all. It is heated and skimmed until a buttery layer
(64 percent fat on average) forms that can be skimmed off the top. In the
heating process, numerous new compounds are formed (mostly from the
breakdown of lactose), giving the cream a complex, almost nutlike sweet-
ness. It is generally used in desserts or to add a luxurious touch to a “cream
tea,” when it’s spread on scones along with strawberry preserves. It can also
add richness when stirred into risotto or even mashed potatoes just before
service. Indian malai, which has 55 percent butterfat, is made from buffalo
milk the same way as clotted cream, by heating and skimming, but is used in
a wide variety of sweet and savory dishes, notably the sweet liquid by which
balls of paneer (a fresh cheese) become dessert.
Yogurt is made everywhere that dairy products are consumed. The milk
(of cows or whatever dairy animals one has—perhaps literally—at hand:
camels, goats, horses, sheep, water buffalos, even yaks) is first heated, then
inoculated with a culture of Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. Bulgaricus or
Streptococcus thermophilus. It’s an ancient substance; Galen wrote, at the
end of the second century, in his book on the properties of foodstuffs that
even those with sensitive stomachs “tolerate oxygala without harm when it
has been surrounded with snow.”3 The yogurt may then be strained to rid it
of excess moisture. In the United States, that strained (well-drained) yogurt
is marketed as “Greek yogurt,” though actual Greek yogurt is much firmer,

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practically cheese. Some strained yogurts are additionally thickened with

butterfat or dehydrated milk powder.
Yogurt is sold—strained or not—in full-fat, low-fat, and nonfat versions.
The reduced fat varieties are artificially thickened with guar gum, locust
bean gum, pectin, and/or various starches (modified or not). If the yogurt is
intended to thicken a cooked sauce, it is important to use the full-fat type;
low- and nonfat versions will curdle at high temperatures. Even full-fat
yogurts can curdle if overheated. They are best added at the very end of
cooking (though some Indian cooks add a starch, such as chickpea flour, to
help prevent curdling). Flavored yogurts, in countless variations, attempt to
ameliorate yogurt’s natural lactic tang. In cooking one should use only plain
yogurt, whether strained or not.
Many dipping sauces capitalize on yogurt’s tartness. Greek tzatziki is
somewhere between a salad and a sauce—chopped cucumber and herbs
(parsley and/or mint and/or dill) swim in yogurt redolent of garlic and lemon
juice, well seasoned with olive oil, pepper, and salt. The yogurt is typi-
cally fermented milk from goats or sheep. Iraqi jajeek is virtually identical.
Turkish cacik is similar but may also include dill, thyme, and sour sumac.
If cucumbers are replaced by carrots and/or lettuce, cacik becomes havuç
tarator. If strained yogurt (labneh) is used and vegetables are omitted, cacik
becomes haydari. Syrian labneh is well-drained yogurt, left to age a bit to
become tarter, then mixed with olive oil and mint. In Iran, a cacik-like dish
adds chopped nuts and raisins; it’s called mâst-o-khiâr. Mâst-chekide is yo-
gurt mixed with a watered-down purée of mixed herbs—basil, cilantro, and
parsley—while mâst-musir is yogurt combined with wild shallots. Through-
out the Balkans, strained yogurt is combined with cucumbers, garlic, and
chopped walnuts to make tarator. An Iraqi sauce of cooked yogurt (laban),
thickened with corn starch and perfumed with mint, is served with kubba—
fried meat-filled dumplings. Raita is like the tzatziki of the Asian subcon-
tinent: it’s yogurt, cucumber, mint, and sometimes cilantro and toasted
cumin seeds. Occasionally minced chile peppers are added, though raitas
are generally meant to cool the palate following very spicy dishes. Dozens of
variations on raita exist, mostly as side dishes, with vegetables, fruits, and
even dals (pulses) stirred into the seasoned yogurt.
Yogurt is, in a sense, the mother sauce of all these dip-like sauces.

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Quark is made by gently warming, then straining soured milk. Its fer-
mentation is carried out by mesophilic Lactococcus bacteria (which thrive at
lower temperatures than the thermophilic species used in making yogurt). It
is like a firm Greek yogurt, bordering on soft cheese. Skyr is a Scandinavian
product, similar to quark (though it’s less thoroughly cooked and may use
rennet to coagulate the raw milk). It’s primarily consumed in Iceland, where
it originated in the days of that nation’s literary sagas, but is now—along
with similar products—popular in the United Kingdom, Germany, the Bal-
tic states, and as far south as Italy, as far east as the Balkans, and as far west
as Canada. An Icelandic dipping sauce, skyronnes, is made by thinning skyr
with olive oil to the consistency of mayonnaise or sour cream and flavoring
it with garlic and herbs—typically basil. It’s served with fish and chips, a
variation on aioli, which is more interesting than American tartar sauce or
the malt vinegar served in the United Kingdom.
We’ve seen that milk and cream are oil-in-water emulsions (while butter is
a water-in-oil emulsion), but cheeses operate a little differently. Depending
on its water content (which varies according to how it is produced and its
age), a cheese may or may not melt well. In fondues, Welsh rabbit, and some
queso recipes, additional liquid (such as wine or beer) can make nonmelting
cheese more amenable to becoming fluid again. Some of the most flavorful
cheeses, like Gruyère and Parmigiano-Reggiano, don’t have sufficient water
to melt normally. Almost all fondues employ a small amount of wine to aid in
the melting process. However, adding sodium citrate to a liquid component,
then introducing the hard cheese a bit at a time (just as one adds oil to water
in forming other emulsions) produces the desired unctuous texture. The
prototypical never-curdling cheese product, Velveeta, uses sodium citrate
for this purpose—as well as sodium alginate (an emulsifying thickener made
from seaweed), a number of milk-derived ingredients, and cheese culture. It
cannot legally describe itself as “cheese”; it’s a “pasteurized prepared cheese
product.” Cheez Whiz, like Velveeta, is a mélange of chemicals—citric acid,
emulsifiers, and stabilizers (carrageenan and xanthan gum)—artificially col-
ored with annatto. Like Velveeta, it actually contains cheese, albeit in some
unusual forms; one version is packaged in an aerosol can, allowing it to be
sprayed onto foods. Fast-food nachos are sometimes slathered with Cheez
Whiz as a rough surrogate for queso con chile, a Mexican dipping sauce
roughly analogous to fondue.

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This concludes the technical portion of this examination of sauces, their

properties, and their preparation. It is not, however, the end of our explora-
tions. We’ve seen hints so far of the next chapter’s subject—because it’s ines-
capable. The next chapter is a curious recapitulation of Auguste Escoffier’s
idea for creating a generation of new sauces by building on existing sauces.
For lack of a better term, let’s just call them “composites.”

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COMPOSITES

U nder Auguste Escoffier’s system, the five mother sauces could be used
to produce countless daughter sauces, just by adding more ingredients.
For example, sauce béchamel becomes sauce mornay when Gruyère cheese
is melted into it (and further enriched with egg yolk). American mac and
cheese is a variation in which cooked macaroni are bound with a béchamel
containing yellow cheddar cheese, then baked. British cheddar sauce is
similar—cheddar cheese melted in béchamel but flavored with prepared
mustard and Worcestershire sauce. If onions are slowly cooked in butter,
puréed, added to béchamel, and then enriched with heavy cream, the mix-
ture becomes sauce soubise. Here’s Escoffier’s version (note that he includes,
in parentheses, the number for a subrecipe to be employed):

Historic Recipe: Sauce Soubise

Cook in butter two lbs. of finely minced onions, scalded for three minutes and
well dried. This cooking of the onions in butter increases their flavor. Now
add one-half pint of thickened Béchamel (28); season with salt and a teaspoon
of powdered sugar. Cook gently for half an hour, rub through a fine sieve, and
complete the sauce with some tablespoons of cream and two oz. of butter.1

The same basic béchamel assumes a different color and becomes sauce améri-
caine with the addition of tomato purée (and a tiny amount of cayenne).2

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Another pink crustacean-enhanced béchamel, sauce Nantua, gets its color

and flavor from the addition of crayfish tails and butter enriched with cream.
Hollandaise becomes sauce maltaise with the addition of blood orange or
sour orange juice. To make sauce béarnaise, begin a hollandaise with some
chervil, lemon juice, shallots, tarragon, vinegar, white wine, black pepper,
and cayenne (or Tabasco) that have been simmered together, strained, and
reduced until practically dry (au sec) before emulsifying clarified butter in
the fragrant residue. Substitute mint for béarnaise’s tarragon, and you’ve
got sauce paloise. Sauce béarnaise in turn becomes sauce choron by adding
tomato paste. Sauce valois is béarnaise plus demi-glace. Add white wine to
valois, and it becomes sauce Colbert.3
Ordinary velouté—in this case, a roux-thickened sauce of fish stock—
becomes white wine sauce with the addition of heavy cream, lemon juice,
and (obviously) wine. Turn it into sauce Bercy by sharpening its acidity
with lemon juice and white wine in the same way, but flavoring it with shal-
lots, enriching with butter instead of cream, and garnishing with chopped
parsley. Cream, egg yolks, and the liquid expressed by cooking mushrooms
and oysters transforms fish-based velouté into sauce normande. Velouté fla-
vored with celery, leeks, onions, and mushrooms becomes a lighter version
of sauce soubise (that is, based not on velouté but on béchamel); it’s called
sauce bretonne.
Velouté made with veal stock becomes sauce allemande by adding heavy
cream, lemon juice, and egg yolks. Chicken-based velouté becomes sauce
poulette by adding lemon juice, mushrooms, and parsley or the richer sauce
suprême aux champignons by adding crème fraîche and mushrooms, thick-
ened with beurre manié. In this next version, Mrs. W. G. Waters simplified
the production of sauce suprême not merely by anglicizing it but also by
substituting béchamel and stock for velouté.

Historic Recipe: Supreme Sauce

Ingredients
White sauce, fowl stock, butter [cream]

Method
Put three-quarters of a pint of white sauce into a saucepan, and when it is
nearly boiling add half a cup of concentrated fowl stock. Reduce until the

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sauce is quite thick, and when about to serve pass it through a tamis into a
bain-marie and add two tablespoonsful of cream.4

Sauce espagnole, Escoffier’s basic brown sauce, can become sauce Robert
with a little tweaking—and a lot of evaporation (the “half-glaze” mentioned
is sauce espagnole, reduced by half, also known as demi-glace).

Historic Recipe: Sauce Robert

Finely mince a large onion and put it into a saucepan with butter. Fry the
onion gently and without letting it brown. Dilute with one-third pint of white
wine, reduce the latter by one-third, add one pint of half-glaze (23), and
leave to simmer for twenty minutes. When serving, finish the sauce with one
tablespoon of meat glaze (15), one teaspoon of dry mustard, and one pinch
of powdered sugar. If, when finished, the sauce has to wait, it should be kept
warm in a double boiler, as it must not boil again.5

An even simpler adaptation of sauce espagnole is meant to cut through

the fatty richness of pork. Simply stir finely chopped cornichons into the
classic brown sauce and voilà: sauce charcutière! A more familiar dish—in
which sharply flavored sauce contrasts with fat flesh—is canard à l’orange.
Its sauce, based on espagnole with tangy citrus juice, has been around at
least since the days of Antoine Carême. This recipe is from one of Carême’s
students, Charles Elmé Francatelli:

Historic Recipe: Bigarrade Sauce

With the carcasses of two or more roasted ducks, make an essence; clarify
it, and reduce it to half glaze. To this add a small ragout-spoonful of worked
espagnole, the juice of one orange, and the rind of two others entirely free
from any portion of the white pith; and having cut the rind into diamond
shapes, blanch these pieces for three minutes in boiling water, and then
put them into the sauce, which, after boiling for five minutes, pour into a
bain-marie for use.6

Sauce chasseur, or hunter’s sauce, adds mushrooms and shallots to sauce

espagnole. Many dishes that incorporate mushrooms—bearing names like
cacciatore and jaeger—suggest that sometimes hunters returned from afield
not with game but with the fungi that appear in autumn’s fields and forests.

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Espagnole morphs into sauce africaine when basil, bay leaf, garlic,
parsley, white wine, and thyme are added—along with vegetables: bell
peppers, onions, and tomatoes. Why exactly it’s called africaine is one of
many Gallic mysteries. Perhaps the “Africans” to which it refers were from
Louisiana, as that combination of seasonings is more New World Cajun
than Old World African.
So, Escoffier’s system merely takes a few basic sauces and alters them with
different flavorings and/or garnishes to create additional, subsidiary sauces.
It’s a very effective system—as long as one begins with Escoffier’s classic
French sauces. However, our kitchens are nothing like Escoffier’s hotel restau-
rant kitchens, and our gastronomic practices do not conform to his notions of
proper sauces. Cooks around the world, many of whom have never even heard
of Escoffier, have independently stumbled upon the efficient use of preexisting
sauces to build new ones. As Harold McGee wrote, “The sauces that cooks
actually make are seldom simple suspensions, molecular dispersions, emul-
sions, or foams. They are usually a combination of two or more.”7
You may have noticed that many of the sauce categories we’ve discussed
so far were already composites in that they began with solutions (such as
stock, vinegar, or wine) and built from there. A simple example is ketchup;
it consists of minute particles of tomato pulp suspended in a solution of
vinegar, salt, sugar, and infused spices. The composite variations here are
more complexly layered. For instance, an emulsion, gel, or cultured protein
(or any combination of them), based originally on some form of solution,
might be combined with one or more others or garnished with one or more
suspended ingredients.
Clear beef bouillon and vinegar, if thickened with an emulsion of cream
and egg yolks, spiced with a bit of prepared mustard (itself a suspension in a
solution), and garnished with grated horseradish (creating another suspen-
sion), yield Albert sauce—a classic British accompaniment for braised beef.
As we’ve seen, butter is a natural emulsion (an unusual one in which the
aqueous phase is suspended in the lipid phase). It can easily become a com-
posite sauce merely by adding other ingredients. These so-called compound
butters can be grouped into savory and sweet types. Among the former,
beurre à la bourguignonne (garlic and parsley butter) is a sauce we associate
so much with escargot that it’s often called “snail butter.” That same butter,
minus the parsley, is the sauce for scampi. Beurre maitre d’hotel is made by

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massaging parsley and lemon juice into slightly softened butter. It is then
formed into a cylinder and chilled to firm it and allow the flavors to merge.
A small slice of the cold compound butter is placed atop hot food (such
as a steak) just at service, where it melts before the diner’s eyes, forming a
sauce. A variation swaps cilantro and lime for parsley and lemon to yield a
quick and elegant topping for grilled fish. Café de Paris butter is a variation
on beurre maitre d’hotel. It omits lemon juice but, in addition to parsley,
includes a host of other flavorings—herbs (chives, dill, marjoram, rosemary,
tarragon), spices (curry powder, paprika), and aromatics (garlic, shallots)—
and receives a blast of umami from anchovies and Worcestershire sauce. A
cold slice is served, just as with beurre maitre d’hotel, ready to melt into an
instant, unctuous sauce. Sauce chateaubriand, a classic accompaniment to
steak, is made by simmering bay leaves, mushrooms, shallots, thyme, and
tarragon in white wine and brown veal stock until they’re reduced, straining
the resulting liquid, and mounting with beurre maitre d’hotel (as in classic
beurre blanc sauce) just before service.
A sweet compound butter can be prepared by beating honey or maple
syrup into softened butter, then forming and chilling it, as with the sa-
vory versions. Honey butter makes an interesting sauce for fried chicken
(whether with waffles or biscuits). Maple compound butter can be tweaked
with some combination of bourbon, cinnamon, citrus zest, or minced dried
cranberries—and might add holiday flavor to waffles, sweet potatoes, or
biscuits and dinner rolls.
Cocktail sauces accompany shellfish, like cold cooked shrimp, fried
calamari or clams, or raw or deep-fried oysters. The American version is
simply ketchup mixed with horseradish and sometimes Tabasco. In Great
Britain and Western Europe, “cocktail sauce” is not primarily ketchup, as
it is in the United States. It begins with a base of mayonnaise but develops
a pink color with a small amount of tomato sauce. It’s more akin to Russian
dressing (which is a little more complex than just mayonnaise and ketchup;
it’s enhanced by chives, horseradish, pimentos, and spices). In Mississippi,
a local version—“comeback sauce”—serves as a dip for fried foods, in addi-
tion to its usual job as a salad dressing (especially in coleslaw). The Costa
Rican version is ensalada derepollo.
Another British cocktail sauce, Marie Rose, was invented during the
1960s but peaked in popularity in the following decade. It began with may-

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onnaise and a tomato product (purée or paste)—like so many others—but

departed from them by adding lemon juice, black pepper, Worcestershire
sauce, and sometimes cayenne or Tabasco.8
Belgians’ famous pommes frites are frequently dipped in a similar pink
mayonnaise concoction. Sauce andalouse—oddly enough—has nothing
whatsoever to do with any part of Spain (unless, as some hypothesize,
mayonnaise originated in Spain). It is, however, a mixture of tomato paste
and mayonnaise, garnished with bits of roasted red pepper. That is the
way Escoffier prepared it, except his red peppers were julienned, not
chopped. Raymond Sokolov went in another direction altogether, making
a lighter, less viscous sauce.

Historic Recipe: Sauce Andalouse

Ingredients
1 cup ordinary velouté
2 Tbsp. tomato paste
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 Tbsp. red bell pepper, peeled, seeded, and diced
1 Tbsp. butter
1½ tsp. parsley, chopped

Method
1. Reduce velouté to ¾ cup in non-reactive pan.
2. Sauté pepper in butter until softened.
3. Whisk in the tomato paste, garlic, and the diced and sautéed pepper. Hold
in a bain-marie until ready to serve. At the last minute sprinkle with parsley.9

In the 1920s, an Argentinian chemist developed his own version of Rus-

sian dressing. His sauce is garnished with roasted red peppers, à la Escoffier,
plus cumin and oregano. He called his invention salsa golf. Luis Federico
Leloir eventually won the Nobel Prize . . . but not for his sauce (the award
instead had something to do with the metabolic properties of sugar nucleo-
tides). Columbian salsa rosado is much the same thing as salsa golf, while
Puerto Rican mayokétchup makes no attempt to hide the sauce’s origins.
In the spring of 2018, the Heinz company floated the idea of a new con-
diment, called “mayochup,” which created something of a storm. The im-
mediate backlash came from many directions, but they all focused on the fact

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that everyone already knew the mixture by other names. “Some on Twitter
even accused Heinz of ‘appropriating,’ ‘gentrifying’ or even ‘colonizing’ the
beloved mayo-ketchup combination.”10
In Utah, the mixture of mayonnaise and ketchup is simply known as “fry
sauce”—because it’s intended as a dip for French fries. It is seasoned with
salt and some undisclosed spices (have you ever seen a commercial sauce or
condiment that didn’t boast about its “secret spices”?). Texans, who have
never been accused of permitting the bland to lead the bland, add hot sauce
to the mixture and call it “Raising Cane.”
Basic Russian dressing is the so-called special sauce served on “billions
and billions” of hamburgers every year.11 Oddly enough, Russian dressing
has even found its way to Russia, the one place where it was not invented.
Conveniently, it’s known there as ketchunez (literally, “ketchup-­mayonnaise”
and pronounced “ketch-onnaise”). The Russian love of mayonnaise is so
well known that Turks used to call the emulsion “Russian salad.” However,
Turkey is a NATO member, so that changed in the 1960s. Cold War poli-
tics caused Turks to rename the sauce “American salad.”
American tartar sauce is one of a number of other mayonnaise-based
sauces. It’s garnished with finely chopped pickles or pickle relish. Tartar
sauce is a much simplified version of French rémoulade: aioli or mayon-
naise, in its most classic form, with added capers, minced cornichon pickles
and shallots, mustard, and vinegar, garnished with fresh herbs (chervil,
chives, salad burnet, and/or tarragon). The main difference between tartar
and rémoulade is tartar’s lack of anchovy. As might be expected, the Cajun
version of mayonnaise-based rémoulade is spicier and more colorful than
most others, including that of Louisiana’s other cuisine, Creole. It can be
studded with bits of celery and parsley, but the main difference is the pres-
ence of black pepper, cayenne, mustard, and (in a nod to another familiar
mayonnaise competitor) ketchup. Rarely shy with seasonings, Cajun cooks
might toss in capers, chopped pickles, horseradish, hot sauce, Worcester-
shire, raw garlic, and a splash of vinegar to brighten things up.
Thousand Island dressing is a thinned-down version of rémoulade often
amended with a wide assortment of flavoring ingredients. It’s usually more
complex than Utah’s fry sauce (or that so-called secret sauce on a certain
hamburger chain’s products). As with Russian dressing, mayonnaise and
ketchup are the primary components, but variations might contain one or

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more of the following ingredients or garnishes, finely minced: bell peppers

or pimentos, chestnuts, chili sauce, chives, cream, garlic, hard-boiled egg,
onions, mustard, green olives, orange juice, paprika, parsley, pickles, Ta-
basco, tomato purée, vinegar, walnuts, or Worcestershire sauce.
Green Goddess dressing was invented in a hotel kitchen in the 1920s and
named for a popular movie of the day. It is part of a long history of green
sauces, most of which are emulsions combined with suspended ingredients,
primarily fresh herbs, which provide the green coloring. It is based on may-
onnaise plus some sour cream, flavored with anchovy paste and lemon juice
plus herbs—chervil, chives, parsley, and tarragon—and marketed in bottled
form, though it has fallen somewhat out of fashion.12 Attempts to revive it
often involve more modern garnishes and placement of the sauce beneath
the salad, where it doesn’t appear heavy or gloppy.

Recipe: Some Quick Mayonnaise Hacks

These can be made using homemade or prepared mayonnaise.
1. Mix mayonnaise with minced garlic as a substitute for aioli.
2. Stir madras curry powder into mayonnaise for a spicy sandwich spread
or salad dressing.
3. Add minced garlic, Worcestershire sauce, anchovy paste, and lemon juice
to mayonnaise for an easy Caesar salad dressing (and one that quells any
health fears one might have about consuming raw egg yolks).
4. Spread mayonnaise mixed with grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, minced
garlic, and parsley before toasting slices of French bread.
5. Spread mayonnaise, minced garlic, and tomato concassée on slices of ba-
guette, then bake until bubbly and lightly browned.

Anchoïade provençale is a much more intense mayonnaise-based sauce.

The first thing you’ll notice when it is served is the distinct aroma of the ancho-
vies pounded into tiny fragments and suspended throughout the sauce. There
may also be olives and herbs, which only intensify its deep umami character.
Ketchup and mayonnaise are no longer ingredients in the arsenal of West-
ern sauciers alone.
The Japanese incorporate ketchup in their tonkatsu dipping sauce (of-
ten served with strips of crisp-fried breaded pork). They combine it with
another Western sauce, Worcestershire,13 or soy sauce, plus garlic, ginger,

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mirin, or sake (if sake is used, salt and sugar are needed). The Japanese
have also taken to mayonnaise, but theirs incorporates mirin, MSG, and hot
sauce—often sriracha.
Dipping sauces in the Philippines are often made by mixing other
sauces (or proto-sauces), such as fish sauce, honey, soy, or vinegar, and
then suspending garnishes of aromatics, herbs, and spices. This is a typi-
cally sour example:

Recipe: Filipino Sour Dipping Sauce

Ingredients
2 Tbsp. tamarind paste
2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 tsp. fresh ginger, coarsely grated
1 Tbsp. honey
1 tsp. sugar
1 Tbsp. soy sauce
2 tsp. fish sauce (such as patís)
½ tsp. crushed chile flakes
to taste salt and pepper

Method
1. Soften the tamarind paste with a little water and strain to eliminate any
hard seeds.
2. Grind all ingredients in mortar and pestle, or food processor, until
smooth.14

In Guam, dipping sauces called fina’denne are ubiquitous. They’re

made in two basic forms: a dark “black” version based on soy sauce
and tuba vinegar (fermented from the sap of coconut palms) and a light
“white” version made with either vinegar or citrus juices and fishy brine.
Fina’denne is often customized with some combination of salt, onion, gar-
lic, hot chile, and/or tomato.
Michel Guérard’s sauce vierge would normally be classed as a form of
vinaigrette (since it’s made of olive oil and lemon juice). However, it also
contains suspended bits of minced basil and tomato (and various other
herbs and spices, as the dish requires) that flavor the sauce by infusion if
heated or maceration if not.

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Caruso sauce is a Uruguayan cross between cheese/cream Alfredo and

béchamel (but adding beef broth to the milk), garnished with smoked
ham, sautéed mushrooms and onions, and nuts. A simpler version is actu-
ally just béchamel flavored with nutmeg and cinnamon and studded with
toasted walnuts and ham (but no cheese). Still another Caruso sauce is
a tomato purée enriched with chicken livers. It has no connection to the
Uruguayan specialty.
In another decadently rich composite sauce from across the Atlantic,
cooked chicken livers seasoned with thyme blossoms are finely ground and
suspended in a mixture of reduced heavy cream and Dijon mustard. Just
before service, butter is stirred in to form Café de Paris sauce.15 It either tops
or is topped by an entrecôte (steak). It’s not a dish for the cholesterol-averse.
Puerto Rico provides a number of examples of noncommercial hot sauces
that are part suspension, part emulsion. The liquid phase of ajilimójili ’s
cooked emulsion can be any combination of various citrus juices and various
vinegars, while the lipid phase is usually olive oil. The flavorings suspended
in the emulsion are bits of minced chiles (habaneros, Scotch bonnets, and/
or gentleman’s peppers—Capsicum frutescens ‘Ají caballero’  ), plus cilantro
or culantro (Eryngium foetidum).
A sweeter version uses ají dulce (which is the same species as the fiery haba-
nero—Capsicum chinense—but a variety that lacks habanero’s heat) in place of
the hot peppers and adds butter, honey, and tomatoes. A green version, pique
verde boricua, is the same as ajilimójili but substitutes cubanelles (Italian fry-
ing peppers, Capsicum annuum) and gentleman’s peppers for the hot chiles.
Mojito isleño is generally served with seafood. To make it, garlic, onions, and
bell peppers are first cooked in olive oil; then bay leaf, chopped capers, olives,
and tomatoes, vinegar, salt, and pepper are added and cooked until soft.
Chinese barbecue sauce (char siu or siu haau) shares only a few charac-
teristics with the American barbecue sauces—especially Kansas City–style
sauces. Both deliver the requisite sweet, spicy, and sour components (in siu
haau, from garlic, honey, palm sugar, five spice powder, and pepper), but
from there they head in different directions. The Chinese sauce adds a lot of
umami via soy sauce, oyster sauce, and hoisin sauce (see chapter 9, “Gels”).
A much more complex variation on Chinese barbecue sauce (sha cha
jiang) increases the umami almost exponentially by incorporating dried

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Three of the primary ingredients in many Chinese sauces: soy, sesame oil, and ginger.
Garlic and scallions would complete many of them. Source: Gary Allen

seafood—oysters, scallops, and shrimp—in a solution prepared from shrimp

heads and shells with rice vinegar and soy sauce. The sauce also contains
suspended particles of lemon zest, peanuts, and doubanjiang (a bottled
paste of chiles, garlic, and fermented soybeans).
Most Chinese American places (especially those that specialize in take-
out) serve a similar brown sauce because most such establishments make it
in bulk from a common list of ingredients—many of which are already sauces
in their own right. As in Escoffier’s restaurant-based system, this is a mother
sauce that can be tweaked for use with different dishes. If you examine this
list of ingredients, you’ll note that many of them serve to boost the umami
of the final product.

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Recipe: Basic Chinese Restaurant Brown Sauce

Ingredients
12 oz. rich chicken stock, unsalted
8½ Tbsp. Kikkoman soy sauce
5 Tbsp. Amoy Gold Label soy sauce
1 Tbsp. mushroom-flavored dark soy sauce
2 Tbsp. hoisin sauce
5 Tbsp. oyster sauce
5 Tbsp. sugar
3 Tbsp. MSG
6 Tbsp. white wine (such as pinot grigio)
4 Tbsp. Shaoxing rice wine
1 Tbsp. sesame oil
3 slices fresh ginger, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 scallion, white parts only, chopped
to taste white pepper (plus salt if needed)

Method
1. Combine all ingredients but the last and simmer until fragrant.
2. Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper if needed.
3. Sauce can be modified with extra garlic, or ginger, or black vinegar and
sugar, or hot chile paste to serve in different dishes.16

Pan sauces are exactly what their name suggests: they are made in the pan
used for cooking the main course (as opposed to being made in a separate
sauce pan) and acquire some of their flavor from the primary ingredients.
Most gravies and classic sauces—like the beurre blanc and beurre rouge
we’ve already discussed—are pan sauces.
Shrewsbury sauce is a kind of pan sauce usually made with roast lamb.
After the meat is done, most of the fat is poured off, and the pan is deglazed
with port, some red currant jelly, a bit of mustard, and a splash of lemon
juice and/or Worcestershire sauce. Flour is added to thicken (adjusting the
viscosity with stock, as needed). Cumberland sauce is also based on red cur-
rant jelly, port, and mustard but has a zippier flavor because it adds ginger
and pepper, plus citrusy notes from the zest of bitter Seville oranges. It is not
thickened with flour but merely reduced somewhat.

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South Africans have a different—and sometimes more tongue-in-cheek—

approach to saucing their meats. They splash monkey gland sauce on
everything from chicken to burgers to spare ribs to steak. The sauce has a
lot of ingredients, many of them prepared sauces. The following recipe is
a relatively simple one (others might include chutney, mustard, soy sauce,
and/or wine). None involve actual monkey parts—glandular or otherwise.

Recipe: Monkey Gland Sauce

Ingredients
1 tsp. olive oil
1 small onion, very finely chopped
1 clove garlic
1 large tomato, peeled, seeded, and finely chopped
1 Tbsp. white wine vinegar
1 Tbsp. cold water
1 tsp. black pepper, coarsely ground
1 Tbsp. sun-dried tomato paste
1 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 Tbsp. dark brown sugar
1 tsp. Tabasco sauce

Method
Gently sauté the onions and garlic until soft and golden, then add all the other
sauce ingredients and simmer briskly for 3 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Reserve the sauce on low heat [and spoon the hot sauce over meat].17

Commercial condiments can in themselves be combinations of other

sauces. The next two are nineteenth-century versions of knockoff, home-
made takes on commercial products (much like those found on countless
websites today). Both call for “mushroom catchup,” which was not as vis-
cous as tomato ketchup. Eliza Leslie published this composite sauce in 1853:

Historic Recipe: Harvey’s Sauce

Dissolve six anchovies in a pint of strong vinegar, and then add to them
three table-spoonfuls of India soy, and three table-spoonfuls of mushroom
catchup, two heads of garlic bruised small, and a quarter of an ounce of
cayenne. Add sufficient cochineal powder to colour the mixture red. Let all

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these ingredients infuse in the vinegar for a fortnight, shaking it every day,
and then strain and bottle it for use. Let the bottles be small, and cover the
corks with leather.18

She also included this similar sauce:

Historic Recipe: Quin’s Sauce

Pound in a mortar six large anchovies, moistening them with their own pickle.
Then chop and pound six small onions.
Mix them with a little black pepper and a little cayenne, half a glass of soy,
four glasses of mushroom catchup, two glasses of claret, and two of black
walnut pickle.
Put the mixture into a small sauce-pan or earthen pipkin, and let it simmer
slowly till all the bones of the anchovies are dissolved.
Strain it, and when cold, bottle it for use; dipping the cork in melted rosin,
and tying leather over it. Fill the bottles quite full.19

Another nineteenth-century British condiment, Wow-Wow sauce, was

built on a foundation of mushroom ketchup. It added prepared mustard,
pickled cucumbers and walnuts, port, and vinegar. It boosted its umami
quotient with beef stock, then thickened it with butter and flour (it’s not
clear whether these last ingredients were in the form of roux or beurre
manié, though roux seems more likely).
Basic sauces, like ketchup and Worcestershire, are often combined to
make new condiments, and some of them are indigenous to very specific
locations.
While horseradish is merely a suspension of grated root in vinegar (and
sometimes beet juice), horseradish sauce is a composite of grated root with
an emulsion (such as mayonnaise) or a starch-thickened gel (like salad dress-
ing or one of the forms of cream sauce that doesn’t include actual cream),
plus flavorings like garlic, onion, salt, and sugar.
Almost all barbecue sauces build on combinations of prepared sauces
that might be solutions, suspensions, or emulsions (ketchup, mustard, and
Worcestershire are typical); indeed, Australian “barbecue sauce” is often
nothing but ketchup and Worcestershire. By the way, “tomato sauce” is
Australian for ketchup.

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Barbecue (which, as any aficionado will argue, is not the same as back-
yard grilling) originated in the Caribbean and takes its name from the grill
of sticks that held the meat, called a barbecoa. Barbecue sauce began as a
basting liquid to keep the long- and slow-cooked meats from drying out.
Basting the meat with flavorful sauce is still the preferred method, though in
the Caribbean it’s called jerking. Jerk sauce shares barbecue sauce’s complex
sweet-sour-spicy nature but has a distinctly tropical twist. Typical ingre-
dients include fresh thyme (possibly the region’s local wild herb, Cuban
oregano, Plectratbhus amboinicus, which is strongly redolent of thyme’s
principal flavoring compound, thymol), allspice, black pepper, cinnamon,
dark brown sugar, garlic, fresh ginger, nutmeg, lime juice, scallions, Scotch
bonnet peppers, and—as we’ll see with many barbecue sauces—a couple of
prepared sauces: soy sauce and ketchup.
However, there is a truly American urge to “improve” on anything that
is already good—often by adding whatever is on hand. That usually means
other condiments. Consequently, a widely differing range of barbecue sauce
styles has evolved based upon local preferences and/or ingredients. One
commercial line of barbecue sauces, which pretends to be from Tennessee,
is flavored with Jack Daniels whiskey. It’s actually made by a huge corpora-
tion headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The recipes for barbecue sauces vary greatly and are strongly regional.
For example, there is a sharp dividing line between the barbecue sauces
of eastern and western North Carolina. In the east, the sauce is based on
vinegar, brown sugar, cayenne, Tabasco (or similar pepper sauce), and
black pepper. In the west, pit masters add butter, ketchup, lemon juice,
mustard, and Worcestershire. In South Carolina, a very different kind of
barbecue sauce reigns supreme. Since many German immigrants settled
the area, mustard is foremost in the mix—while western North Carolina’s
sauce features some mustard, South Carolina’s barbecue sauces are posi-
tively yellow from it.
Memphis barbecue sauces are thin, like those of the Carolinas, but they
are sweetened with tomato. On the other side of the Appalachians, barbe-
cue sauces get thicker (containing reduced tomato sauce) and, very often,
sweeter. Kansas City’s style—like that of the famous Arthur Bryant—is a
deep russet color, sweet and tangy. When most people (outside the areas al-
ready mentioned) think of “barbecue sauce,” this is what comes to mind—in

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part because large-scale commercial BBQ sauces, such as those produced by

Heinz (which includes several under the Jack Daniels brand name) and KC
Masterpiece, began with Kansas City–style recipes. These companies also
produce marinades and steak sauces.
As one moves south, molasses darkens the sauce even more. Moving
west, the sauce takes on Tex-Mex overtones, incorporating chili powder
and cumin and the smoky mesquite-flavored drippings from a beef bris-
ket. In this, Texas departs from almost all other barbecue styles (pork and
chicken are the proteins of choice in most regions).
Barbecue sauces come in even more specific—that is, more narrowly
geographically defined—variations. For example, in parts of Alabama, you
might encounter the strangest barbecue sauce in the United States. This
sauce is not red, brown, or yellow—it is white. A scoop of mayonnaise
thinned with cider vinegar and seasoned with a lot of cayenne pepper, celery
seeds, garlic, horseradish, mustard, salt, and sugar tops smoky chicken and
pork in the northern hill country.
In the region around Louisville, Kentucky, Henry Bain Sauce (originally
created at the Pendennis Club, at the very beginning of the twentieth cen-
tury, specifically to accompany members’ wild game) is dominant. Today it
is bottled and sold in local grocery stores—and more likely poured on steak
or roast beef. It’s definitely a composite sauce; it combines chutney (Major
Grey’s mango-based sauce is classic, though other fruit chutneys are some-
times substituted), ketchup, A.1., Worcestershire, and chili sauce, spiced
up with some form of Tabasco-like hot sauce.
Just west of Louisville, a very tart version of barbecue sauce was origi-
nally meant to temper the rich gaminess of fatty mutton. The slow-cooked
meat is basted continuously with an acidic mixture of cider vinegar, lemon
juice, and Worcestershire sauce (well seasoned with salt and pepper). The
sauce known as “Owensboro dip” repeats the basting ingredients but adds
allspice, brown sugar, garlic powder, and onion salt (plus, if a little more
umami is needed, MSG).
The task of cooking true barbecue is long, hot, and smoky—and fre-
quently, but not always, men’s work. It’s the sort of job that generates a
manly (or womanly) thirst, and, as often as not, the thirst quencher of choice
is beer. It’s almost inconceivable that, at some point or another, some of that

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Barbecue, once a primarily Southern phenomenon, is now found everywhere. This

one, from New England, features a decidedly non-Yankee ingredient: habaneros.
Source: Gary Allen

beer would not have found its way into the sauce. A recent Google search for
“beer barbecue sauce” garnered more than fifty thousand hits.
Recipes for such BBQ sauces include various beers (which vary from
region to region, following the “whatever-is-at-hand” rule), from lite to stout
or from fruity lambic to hoppy IPA; hot peppers, from anchos to cayenne, or
hot sauces, from Crystal to sriracha; and a range of sweeteners from honey
or corn syrup to maple syrup to molasses.
Texans love beef brisket for their barbecues, and Jewish cooks love bris-
ket, so we should expect that Jewish cooks who barbecue in the Lone Star
State would create their own sauce to serve with unctuously fatty, smoky
brisket. The following uncooked BBQ sauce was created in the 1970s using
plenty of commercial sauces as ingredients.

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Recipe: Austin Jewish Community BBQ Sauce

Ingredients
2 bottles Heinz ketchup
1 12oz. bottle Heinz chili sauce
½ bottle A.1. sauce
dash Tabasco sauce
1 Tbsp. soy sauce
⅓ cup brown mustard
1 can beer
1 Tbsp. mustard powder
1½ cups brown sugar
2 Tbsp. black pepper
1½ cups red wine vinegar
1 cup lemon juice
2 Tbsp. salad oil
to taste garlic, minced

Method
Combine all ingredients. Cover and store, refrigerated, until served.20

If barbecue cooks are too lazy to make their sauce, several commercial
bottled sauces now come in beer variations. For those rare pit masters who
don’t drink beer, it’s possible to thin barbecue sauce recipes with cola, root
beer, or Dr Pepper.
In central Africa, the barbecue tradition is strong and reveals a bit of the
region’s colonial history. The marinade for large cuts of beef, such as bris-
ket or shoulder, is composed of cayenne and umami-rich Maggi sauce21
from England. The regional term for barbecue, however, is French: coupé-
coupé (literally, “cut-cut”).
Throughout the Great Plains states, Dorothy Lynch Home Style Dress-
ing has been a staple sauce since the 1940s. Based mostly on canned tomato
soup (a suspension that has been modified—thickened into a thin gel—with
corn starch and rice flour), it’s flavored with vinegar and spices and emulsi-
fied with soybean oil and xanthan gum. Midwesterners use it as a foundation
for dips, barbecue sauces, glazes for meaty appetizers (chicken wings, cock-
tail wieners, meatballs, sausages, and ribs), and marinades—not to mention

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variations on the theme of salad dressings. The Dorothy Lynch website even
features crowd-sourced recipes for a cake and muffins.
Moving away from barbecue, Sephardic agristada is a tangy hollandaise-
like sauce that may or may not contain a bit of roux. Egg yolks and lemon
juice are first beaten together and then combined with olive oil, plus a small
amount of chicken broth or simply warm water. They are cooked together,
with more liquid slowly added until the desired consistency is achieved. As
the sauce contains no dairy, it can accompany meats (though fried fish and
vegetables, especially artichokes, are more frequent plate-mates). If thinned
down and garnished with tiny meatballs, the sauce becomes a soup of the
same name. Agristada is closely related to Greek avgolemono, though it was
originally soured with verjuice.
Chinese sweet-and-sour sauce—a garishly colored coating for battered
and deep-fried chicken, pork, or shrimp in virtually every takeout joint—is
a classic example of a composite sauce—“composite” in terms of not only
the sauces being combined but also their original provenance. The “sour”
comes from vinegar, the salty from soy sauce, the sweet from sugar, the rich-
ness and savor from dark, nutty sesame oil, and the almost frightening color
from ketchup.22 This sauce usually envelops the breaded protein (as well as
peppers and sometimes pineapple) in gelatinous glory thanks to corn starch.
The original sweet-and-sour pork, from northeastern China, guo bao
rou, is simpler—and much less garish than that found in Chinese American
restaurants. Strips of battered pork are deep-fried, as in the US version, but
instead of receiving a thick coating of fluorescent goo, the strips are tossed
with a mixture of syrup and vinegar. The potato starch coating lightly thick-
ens the sauce. American sweet-and-sour pork is an adaptation of the Can-
tonese dish char siu bao. Haw Flakes (a kind of candy made from sugar and
hawthorn berries), preserved plums, and of course vinegar lend a sweet-tart
flavor and reddish coloration. Those qualities are mimicked, unsuccessfully,
by ketchup (and sometimes pineapple juice and artificial food coloring) in
the United States.
A cooked Vietnamese dipping sauce, nuóc leo, begins by frying garlic and
bird’s eye chiles in oil, adding chopped peanuts, and cooking a bit longer.
The liquid components (chicken stock, fish sauce, coconut milk, and hoi-
sin sauce) and a little sugar are added next. The mixture is cooked until it

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thickens slightly and the oil begins to render out of the peanuts. This combi-
nation of solutions and prepared suspensions, plus suspended softened pea-
nuts, is further garnished with chopped toasted peanuts for a bit of crunch.
Another cooked sauce from Vietnam, sot ca chua, simmers tomato conca-
sée and minced garlic in coconut milk or chicken stock, seasoned with fish
sauce and chiles. It’s usually poured over fried fish or tofu.
Many Thai dipping sauces (known collectively as nam chim) are com-
posites of other sauce types. Nam chim kai is the nation’s basic sweet chili
sauce; it’s as omnipresent as ketchup on a Western table. When garnished
with chopped peanuts, cilantro, and cucumber, it’s called nam chim thot
man and serves as a dip for fried cakes of crab, fish, or prawns. Nam chim
satay is made by simmering brown sugar, chiles, lime juice, peanut butter,
salt, and shrimp paste in thinned coconut milk. It’s the familiar sauce served
with skewers of marinated chicken strips. Achat or nam chim taengkwa is
a thin dipping sauce of sweetened vinegar with suspended bits of minced
cucumber and hot chile peppers. Another thin sauce, nam chim thale, is a
sweet-sour-savory blend of fish sauce, lime juice, and dissolved sugar, gar-
nished with minced garlic and chile. Sweet, sticky brown nam chim chaeo,
served with grilled pork, is made from rice flour that has been toasted until
nearly black with chiles, fish sauce, and palm sugar.
Nam chim suki is primarily a sauce used in a hot pot for cooking other
foods, but—since it is very pungent—it is also used as a sauce for bland
foods, like noodles. It’s basically a purée of odoriferous preserved bean curd
along with its liquid; prepared chili sauce; fresh bird’s eye chiles; garlic, both
fresh and pickled (krathiam dong), along with juice of the pickled garlic; salt;
sugar; malt vinegar; and lime juice. All the ingredients are ground together,
thinned with water to the desired consistency, and garnished with sesame
seeds and a drizzle of toasted sesame oil.
While most of the sauces discussed in this book are savory, we shouldn’t
overlook those that are meant for the dessert course. The simplest ones are
coulis: sweetened fruit purées, such as raspberry or strawberry, which may
or may not be spiked with alcohol. Many dessert sauces are commercial
products, and among the most popular are those that feature chocolate as
the main ingredient.
Bar chocolate is a solidified suspension of cocoa particles and sugar in
cocoa butter. Milk chocolate is the same but with added milk solids. Bar

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A quintessential New York sauce used in desserts and to make iconic egg creams.
Source: Gary Allen

chocolate is also an emulsion of cocoa butter and sugar syrup. One reason
we find it so deeply satisfying is that (like another solid emulsion—cold
butter) it melts at body temperature. By “melting in one’s mouth,” a solid
morphs into an unctuous fat-rich sauce.
Chocolate syrup is an emulsion of cocoa in corn syrup (stabilized by
some mono- and diglycerides and usually some additional xanthan gum).
Hot fudge sauce is merely chocolate ganache (an emulsion of bar chocolate
and heavy cream, sometimes with a bit of butter); it’s basically a melted ver-
sion of a chocolate truffle.

167
 CHAPTER 12

To make caramel sauce, sugar is slowly heated until Maillard reactions turn
it golden brown. As that happens, a number of new chemical compounds are
created. One of them, diacetyl, in low concentrations, smells and tastes like
butter, so butterscotch sauce does not actually need butter for flavor (though
it does improve the texture and mouth-feel). Caramel sauce, which would oth-
erwise be a supersaturated solution, generally contains natural emulsions such
as milk or heavy cream. Sometimes additional sugar is not even needed—the
slow heating of lactose in the milk or cream is sufficient to develop the diacetyl
aroma and desired Maillard coloration.

168
 AFTERWORD

T he history of sauces is complicated. Some have made concerted efforts

to simplify (think Raymond Sokolov’s The Saucier’s Apprentice or
Chef André Soltner’s reduction of Auguste Escoffier’s five mother sauces,
Les Fonds, to just two stocks: a brown one made from roasted veal bones and
mirepoix, and a white one that substitutes unroasted chicken or fish bones
for the veal), but they have had only limited—and very narrowly defined—
success. In counterpoint to those attempts at simplification, the constant
exchange of culinary ideas from other cultures has only added levels of
complexity that would never have been imagined by the likes of Taillevant
or Antoine Carême.
There are those who believe that sauces are overly fussy, that they merely
obscure the flavor of the main ingredient in a dish—or, worse, fraudulently
obscure the poor quality of less-than-fresh food. Poppy Cannon once said,
“People think French cooking is gooking it up.”1 This is hardly a new idea.
For example, in The Deipnosophistae, Athenaeus quoted The Peace, in which
Theopompus complained, somewhat less colloquially, “The weather loaf is
nice, but to cheat us with the addition of sauces to the loaves is vicious.”2
Clearly, anyone who has read all the way to the end of this book is less
sauce-averse than was Theopompus. I confess to feeling a tiny frisson of
amusement in knowing that this puritan of a Greek historian—who seems
not to have known the epicurean pleasures of sauces—is largely forgotten
today, while we happily enjoy our saucy version of the good life . . . as long
as it’s gooked up with the right sauce.

169
Runny egg yolks: a category of sauce that has not even been considered—“foods that
need no other ingredients to provide their own sauce.” Perhaps a subject for a later
edition? Source: Gary Allen
 NOTES

A FEW WORDS ABOUT SALT

1. Athenaeus, The Deipnosophistae, trans. Charles Burton Gulick (Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press, 1927–1941), 9:161.
2.  Zhou Hongcheng, “Salt and Sauce in the Chinese Culinary,” Flavor & For-
tune 16 (Spring 2009): 9–10.

CHAPTER 1. SO MANY RICH SAUCES

1. Athenaeus, The Deipnosophistae, trans. Charles Burton Gulick (Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press, 1927–1941), 13:414.
2. This comic playwright was a contemporary of Alexander the Great (ca.
323–283 bce).
3. Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, 3:436.
4.  Ibid., 3:58.
5.  Ibid., 6:95–97.
6.  Ibid., 2:379.
7.  The tablets are in Yale University’s Babylonian collection. They are more
than thirty-seven centuries old.
8.  Jean Bottéro, The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 27.
9.  Some members of this genus are employed in traditional Chinese medicine to
treat erectile dysfunction and urinary tract diseases.

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 N otes

10. Laura Kelley, “New Flavors for the Oldest Recipes,” Aramco World
(November/December 2012).
11. Ibid.
12. Petronius, The Satyricon, trans. William Arrowsmith (Ann Arbor: Univer-
sity of Michigan Press, 1959), 33.
13. Juvenal, The Satires of Juvenal, trans. Rolfe Humphries (Bloomington: In-
diana University Press, 1958), 14:7–9.
14.  Murri sounds like the Romans’ muria, and they are related. Muria was a
lighter sauce; it was the brine in which fish, such as tuna, was preserved. Liquamen
was a little heavier, being made of tiny fish, such as sardines and anchovies (Viet-
namese fish sauce, such as that made by Red Boat, is very similar; it’s also made
from anchovies). Garum was the heaviest, being made from entrails and blood of
large fish, like tuna.
15.  Zhou, “Salt and Sauce in the Chinese Culinary,” 9–10.
16. Ibid.

CHAPTER 2. OLD WINE IN NEW BOTTLES

1.  Guillaume Tirel, Le viandier de Taillevent, trans. James Prescott, http://

www.telusplanet.net/public/prescotj/data/viandier.
2. Ibid.
3.  Michel de Montaigne, The Essays of Michel de Montaigne, trans. George B.
Ives (New York: Heritage Press, 1946), 407.
4.  Ibid., 407–8.
5. Anthimus, Anthimus, De observatione ciborum: On the Observance of Foods,
ed. and trans. Mark Grant (Blackawton, Totnes, Devon, UK: Prospect Books,
1996), 73.
6.  Ibid., 79.
7.  Joan Santanach, ed., The Book of Sent Soví: Medieval Recipes from Catalo-
nia, trans. Robin Vogelzang (Barcelona: Barcino-Tamesis, 2014), 49.
8.  Ibid., 83.
9.  Samuel Pegge, The Forme of Cury: A Roll of Ancient English Cookery Com-
piled, about A.D. 1390, Project Gutenberg, http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8102.
10. Ibid.
11.  Wynkyn de Worde, The Boke of Keruynge (East Sussex, UK: Southover
Press, 2003), 44.
12.  Ibid., 62.
13.  T. Sarah Peterson, Acquired Taste: The French Origins of Modern Cooking
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1994), 193–94.

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 N otes

14. Louis, chevalier de Jaucourt, “Sauce,” The Encyclopedia of Diderot &

d’Alembert Collaborative Translation Project, trans. Sean Takats, http://hdl.handle​
.net/2027/spo.did2222.0000.666.
15. Peterson, Acquired Taste, 193.

CHAPTER 3. NINETEENTH CENTURY

1.  Ian Kelly, Cooking for Kings: The Life of Antonin Carême, the First Celebrity
Chef (New York: Walker, 2004), 233.
2.  Ibid., 232.
3.  Ibid., 234.
4.  Ibid., 233–34.
5.  Carême was, at various points in his career, employed by Talleyrand, Na-
poleon, England’s King George IV, Russia’s Tsar Alexander I, and—in private
practice—James Mayer Rothschild.
6.  Quoted in Raymond Sokolov, The Saucier’s Apprentice: A Modern Guide to
Classic French Sauces for the Home (New York: Knopf, 1982), 7.
7. Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste, trans. M. F. K.
Fisher (New York: Limited Editions Club, 1949), 92–93.
8.  Ibid., 67.
9.  Alexis Benoist Soyer, The Gastronomic Regenerator: A Simplified and En-
tirely New System of Cookery, with Nearly Two Thousand Practical Receipts Suited
to the Income of All Classes, 6th ed. (London: Simpkin, Marshall, & Co., Stationers’
Hall Court, 1849).
10. “The Original Tomato Sauce,” Vintage Cookbook Trials, https://vintage
cookbooktrials.wordpress.com/2013/04/11/the-original-tomato-sauce.
11. Soyer, The Gastronomic Regenerator.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15.  Quoted in Memoirs of Alexis Soyer: With Unpublished Receipts and Odds
and Ends of Gastronomy, ed. F. Volant and J. R. Warren (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2013), 154.
16.  Quoted in Ruth Cowen, Relish: The Extraordinary Life of Alexis Soyer, Vic-
torian Celebrity Chef (London: Orion Books, 2007), 243.
17. Alexis Soyer, The Modern Housewife (New York: D. Appleton & Co.,
1851), 65–66.
18.  Ibid., 153.

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 N otes

19. Anonymous, The Housekeeper’s Guide to Preserved Meats, Fruits, Vegetables,

&c. (London: Crosse & Blackwell, 1890), 144.
20. Cowen, Relish, 156.
21. Ibid.
22.  Ibid., 243.
23.  The Musical World, XXXI (London: Meyers & Co., 1853), 360.
24. Perhaps, despite his celebrity and triumphs, he still had something to
prove—that he could outdo his hometown’s best?
25.  Nineteenth-century Crosse & Blackwell newspaper ad.
26.  Ironically, Crosse & Blackwell’s facilities were right on the edge of the vicin-
ity of a famous cholera epidemic. In 1854, Dr. John Snow traced the source of the
disease to a water pump on Broad Street, only a few blocks from the firm’s Soho
shop. Also, in July 1850, public concern about unsavory food additives led to the
creation of the Public Health Act. As a result, Blackwell had to confess before Par-
liament that the firm had added poisonous copper sulfate and iron sulfate as food
colorings to some of its products.
27. Soyer, Modern Housewife, 64.

CHAPTER 4. THE FRENCH WERE NOT, OF COURSE,

THE ONLY SAUCIERS

1.  A recipe is included in chapter 8, “Suspensions.”

2.  Kanz al-Fawa’id fi tanwi’ al-Mawa’id, quoted in Lilia Zaouali, Medieval
Cuisine of the Arabic World: A Concise History with 174 Recipes, trans. M. B. De-
Bevoise, California Studies in Food and Culture (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2007), 65.
3.  Warfare in the Middle East, especially in Syria, has made the growth and
distribution of true Aleppo pepper almost impossible.
4.  Gary Allen, The Herbalist in the Kitchen (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
2007), 236–37.
5. Mothbeans, Vigna aconitifolia.
6. Asafoedita, the dried and powdered resin of Ferula assafoetida, a foul-­
smelling substance that, once cooked, adds a pleasant garlicky taste to foods.
7.  A common but variable Indian spice blend that consists of a combination of
different spices, among them black pepper, cardamom, coriander seed, cinnamon,
cloves, cumin, powdered ginger, mace, and nutmeg, all ground together.
8.  Black salt, a peculiarly sulfurous mineral collected in Bangladesh, northern
India, Nepal, and Pakistan.

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 N otes

9.  Sugar often made from the sap of date palms; brown sugar often serves as a
substitute.
10.  Discussed at length in chapter 7, “Solutions,” and chapter 8, “Suspensions.”
11.  In sub-Saharan Africa, the ground seeds of various melons are added to
soups and stews to thicken them in the same manner as nuts or pumpkin seeds. The
dishes are collectively known as egusi or agushi.

CHAPTER 5. THE MODERN WORLD OF COOKING BEGINS

1.  Auguste Escoffier, Escoffier, Memories of My Life (New York: Van Nostrand
Reinhold, 1997), 119.
2.  Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson, Accounting for Taste: The Triumph of French
Cuisine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 157.
3.  Auguste Escoffier, Escoffier Cookbook: A Guide to the Fine Art of French Cui-
sine (New York: Crown, 1969), 20.
4.  “Bechamel 101,” Escoffier, http://courses.escoffieronline.com/bechamel-101.
5.  “Veloute 101,” Escoffier, http://courses.escoffieronline.com/veloute-101.
6. Escoffier, Escoffier Cookbook, 20.
7. “How to Make Sauce Espagnole,” Escoffier, http://www.escoffieronline
.com/how-to-make-sauce-espagnole.
8. Escoffier, Escoffier Cookbook, 18–20.
9.  “How to Make Hollandaise Sauce,” Escoffier, http://www.escoffieronline
.com/how-to-make-hollandaise-sauce.
10. “Tomato Sauce,” BBC, http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/tomatosauce​
_3755.
11. Escoffier, Escoffier, 180.
12.  Quoted in ibid., xvi.

CHAPTER 6. TIME FOR A CHANGE

1.  Mrs. Isabella Mary Beeton, The Book of Household Management (London:
S.  O. Beeton, 1861).
2.  Auguste Escoffier, Escoffier Cookbook: A Guide to the Fine Art of French Cui-
sine (New York: Crown, 1969), 51.
3.  “Ethnic” has come to be seen as a pejorative when applied to cuisines. It
reeks of racist inferences to “the other” and is usually combined with an unwill-
ingness to pay the higher prices deserved by other traditional—respectable (read:
“European”)—restaurants.

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 N otes

CHAPTER 7. SOLUTIONS

1.  Brownian motion—heat, after all, is just movement; the faster the motion of
the molecules, the higher the temperature.
2.  This is an example of the many medieval recipes that members of the Society
for Creative Anachronism have researched and re-created.
3.  Stephan’s Florilegium (http://www.florilegium.org).
4.  The juice of wine grapes that has not yet fermented.
5. Escoffier, Escoffier Cookbook, 1.
6.  A thick-leaved kelp, various species of Saccharina or Laminaria.
7.  Perfumers often capture the airborne scent molecules of flowers on butter,
where they stick to the butter’s surface; they then extract those essences by washing
them out with alcohol.
8.  “Alici” hearkens back to Roman allec, the solid residue of decomposed fish
left over when making liquamen. It’s similar to the pissalat of today’s Provence
(which is anchovy paste flavored with bay leaf, black pepper, cloves, and thyme,
thinned with a little olive oil).
9.  Gary Allen, Can It! The Perils and Pleasures of Preserving Food (London:
Reaktion, 2016), 203.
10.  Chinese mixed ground, sweet spices: cinnamon, cloves, fennel seed, star
anise, and szechuan peppercorns.
11.  Emily Hahn, The Cooking of China (New York: Time-Life Books, 1968), 43.
12.  The anthocyanin pigments in the cabbage are very pH sensitive. If cooked
with alkaline baking soda instead of vinegar, the vegetable acquires a very unap-
petizing blue color.
13. The liquid is not, as commonly assumed, blood. All blood is carefully
drained from meat during the slaughtering process.
14.  Ian Chillag, “Sandwich Monday: Gravy Bread,” The Salt, July 22, 2013,
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/07/22/204535779/sandwich-monday​
-gravy-bread.

CHAPTER 8. SUSPENSIONS

1. The term “coulis” originally just meant “sauce” and referred specifically
to meat juices, especially veal stock. It has gradually evolved to mean all kinds of
purées of meats or vegetables. See Prosper Montagné, Nina Froud, and Charlotte
Snyder Turgeon, Larousse Gastronomique: The Encyclopedia of Food, Wine and
Cookery (London: Hamlyn, 1961), 310.

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 N otes

2.  The company name comes from the Taiwanese freighter (with a Panamanian
registry) on which sauce inventor David Tran emigrated from Vietnam to California.
3.  Tran’s current factory (650,000 square feet, in Irwindale, California) has
drawn a lot of complaints from—and civil actions by—neighbors who don’t appreci-
ate the pungent aromas generated by the plant.
4.  Bartolomeo Scappi and Terence Scully, The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi
(1570) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), n.p.
5.  Thomas Farrell, “A Tinned History of Crosse & Blackwell (1706–1914),”
Let’s Look Again, http://letslookagain.com/2014/10/crosse-blackwell.
6.  Mrs. Isabella Mary Beeton, The Book of Household Management (London:
S. O. Beeton, 1861), 715–16.
7.  Karen Hess, Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery: And Booke of Sweet-
meats: Being a Family Manuscript, Curiously Copied by an Unknown Hand Some-
time in the Seventeenth Century, Which Was in Her Keeping from 1749, the Time
of Her Marriage to Daniel Custis, to 1799, at Which Time She Gave It to Eleanor
Parke Custis, Her Granddaughter, on the Occasion of Her Marriage to Lawrence
Lewis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 174.
8.  Mary Randolph, The Virginia Housewife or, Methodical Cook (New York:
Dover, 1993), 94–95.
9.  Thomas P. Branston, The Handbook of Practical Receipts, of Everyday Use
(Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, 1857), 148.
10.  Ben Robinson, “Please Stop Trying to Serve Me House-Made Artisanal
Organic Ketchup,” Thrillist, September 23, 2015, https://www.thrillist.com/eat
/nation/why-fancy-ketchup-is-stupid.
11.  Joan Santanach, ed., The Book of Sent Soví: Medieval Recipes from Catalo-
nia, trans. Robin Vogelzang (Barcelona: Barcino-Tamesis, 2014), 81.
12.  The patent has long expired, and powdered mustard of the Colman variety
is manufactured everywhere, under many brand names.
13.  Quoted in Jacqueline Raposos, “Tim Graham’s Secret Weapon,” Tasting
Table, April 14, 2015, https://www.tastingtable.com/cook/national/kasundi-recipe
-homemade-condiment-tim-graham-chicago.
14.  In the West, we think of coriander seeds as a spice and coriander leaves
as the herb cilantro. In Thailand, all parts of the plant—leaves, roots, seeds, and
stems—are thought of as separate ingredients and have different names.
15.  These were formerly called “kaffir” limes, but the word is racially insensi-
tive—it’s an epithet used by whites to denigrate blacks in South Africa—so Thai
makrut is preferred.
16.  Ped equals “hot,” som is “sour,” keo wan means “green sweet,” and lueang
is simply “yellow” in Thai.

177
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17.  Gary Allen, The Herbalist in the Kitchen (Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 2007), 452.
18.  A rotola was a Neapolitan measure of weight, roughly equal to two pounds.
Quoted in Stefano Milioni, “The First Italian Tomato Recipes,” Italian Tribune,
March 27, 2014, http://www.italiantribune.com/the-first-italian-tomato-recipes.
19.  Marinara doesn’t exist as a separate sauce in Italy; in the United States, the
word refers to any generic tomato sauce, especially in a jar. The name suggests that
the sauce was a favorite of sailors.
20.  The past participle of the verb ragoûtier, “to revive the taste.”
21.  Penelope Casas, The Foods and Wines of Spain (New York: Knopf, 2005),
214.
22.  “U.S. Population: Which Brands of Whipped Topping (Cream Type) Do
You Eat Most Often?,” Statista, https://www.statista.com/statistics/278648/us​
-households-most-eaten-brands-of-whipped-topping-cream-type.
23. Anonymous, A Proper Newe Booke of Cokerye (London: Lant and Bankes,
1545; repr. 1560), 25.
24.  The technique is really only a high-tech version of what we’ve been doing in
barbecue pits for ages.

CHAPTER 9. GELS

1.  Auguste Escoffier, Escoffier Cookbook: A Guide to the Fine Art of French Cui-
sine (New York: Crown, 1969), 17.
2.  André Soltner, “André Soltner on Mother Sauces,” Lucky Peach, May 27,
2015, http://luckypeach.com/andre-soltners-guide-to-mother-sauces.
3.  Mammocks (known as cracklins in the United States) are crispy bits of pork
left after the lard is rendered. Modern cooks, who purchase pure-white, already
rendered lard, will not encounter any mammocks.
4.  Quoted in Jonell Galloway, “What to Eat in France: The History of Sauce,”
Rambling Epicure, http://www.theramblingepicure.com/what-to-eat-in-france-the
-history-of-sauce.
5.  Eliza Leslie, Miss Leslie’s New Cookery Book (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson,
1857), 294.
6.  The King had some unusual and distinctly nonroyal food preferences. His
favorite sandwich is said to have been fried bacon (a full pound), with peanut butter
and grape jelly, on Italian bread.
7.  In some parts of Texas, the liquid part of chili con carne is “tightened” with
a little masa harina.

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 N otes

8.  Lye reacts with surface starch to give pretzels their gloss.
9.  Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, 1st
Scribner rev. ed. (New York: Scribner, 2004), 624.

CHAPTER 10. EMULSIONS

1.  Actually, the cream doesn’t rise; gravity pulls the heavier whey to the bottom.
2.  Fannie Merritt Farmer, The Original Boston Cooking-School Cookbook 1896
(facsimile) (New York: Weathervane Books, 1973), 290–91.
3.  Edward Bottone, “Blended Me with Science!” Table Matters, June 7, 2016,
http://tablematters.com/2016/06/07/blended-me-with-science.
4.  In the Netherlands, mayonnaise must contain a minimum of 70 percent oil and
5 percent egg yolks. Like Miracle Whip, the much lighter Dutch fritessaus—which,
as the name suggests, is a topping for fries—has only a fraction of mayonnaise’s oil.
5.  “Kraft Miracle Whip Consumer Insights,” InfoScout, https://infoscout.co
/brand/kraft_miracle_whip.
6. “Kraft Mayo Consumer Insights,” InfoScout, https://infoscout.co/brand
/kraft_mayo.
7.  Finely chopped tomato that has first been seeded and peeled.
8.  John Evelyn, Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets (London, 1699), 14–15.
9.  Greg Morabito, “Guy Fieri Admits That Donkey Sauce Is Just Aioli,” Eater,
https://www.eater.com/2017/6/27/15879670/guy-fieri-aioli-donkey-sauce.
10.  Quoted in Maestra Suzanne de la Ferté, “Food and Feasting in Renaissance
Italy,” Kingdom of Northchiefs, September 2015, http://northshield.org/resources
/pdf/moas/FoodFeastItalianRen.pdf, 10.
11.  Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen,
1st Scribner rev. ed. (New York: Scribner, 2004), 624.

CHAPTER 11. CULTURED SAUCES

1.  Vegetarians and people who stick close to a Kosher diet avoid cheeses made
with rennet. Various sour-plant-based compounds (nettle juice, for example) can
accomplish very similar levels of protein denaturing.
2. Romanian smântână looks the same and sounds similar—it’s just as thick as
sour cream—but it is unfermented and sweet. It is not a substitute for the others
listed here.
3.  Oxygala, literally “sour milk.” Owen Powell (trans.), Galen: On the Properties
of Foodstuffs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 127.

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CHAPTER 12. COMPOSITES

1.  Auguste Escoffier, Escoffier Cookbook: A Guide to the Fine Art of French Cui-
sine (New York: Crown, 1969), 42–43.
2.  Hundreds of variations of sauce américaine exist. This is merely the sim-
plest. Escoffier’s, for example, is the by-product of an elaborate preparation of
lobster, not a separate sauce.
3.  Does that make sauce choron and sauce valois granddaughter sauces?
4.  Mrs. W. G. Waters, The Cook’s Decameron: A Study in Taste (London:
W. Heinemann, 1901).
5. Escoffier, Escoffier Cookbook, 31.
6.  Charles Elmé Francatelli, The Modern Cook: A Practical Guide to the Culi-
nary Art in All Its Branches, Adapted as Well for the Largest Establishments, as for
the Use of Private Families (London: Richard Bentley, 1846), 9–10.
7.  Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen,
1st Scribner rev. ed. (New York: Scribner, 2004), 596.
8.  Some recipes add sugar, which somehow seems wrong. However, sauce
lagon bleu, a Polynesian specialty, incorporates honey and chopped pickles in the
basic Thousand Island formula, so who’s to say?
9.  Raymond A. Sokolov, The Saucier’s Apprentice: A Modern Guide to Classic
French Sauces for the Home (New York: Knopf, 1982), 106–7.
10.  Samantha Schmidt, “Heinz Promotes Its New ‘Mayochup’ and Sparks an
International Controversy,” Washington Post, April 13, 2018.
11.  McDonald’s periodically offers special sandwiches topped with ketchup and
Arch Sauce—a mixture of mayonnaise and brown mustard.
12.  Many restaurant-goers perceive thick mayonnaise- and sour cream–based
salad dressings as being less healthy than lighter vinaigrettes. This perception has
not, however, stopped them from ordering blue cheese dressings.
13.  Which, ironically, is descended from Southeast Asian sauces—lending some
credence to the old “what goes around, comes around” maxim.
14.  “Philippines Sauces,” Asian Recipes, https://www.asian-recipe.com/philip
pines/philippines-sauces.html#sour_dipping_sauce.
15.  This is not the same as Café de Paris butter, described elsewhere.
16.  “Chinese Brown Sauce, Base Sauce, Mother Sauce or Kung Po Sauce,”
Art of Cooking, http://www.theartofcooking.org/chinese-american-recipes/chinese
-brown-sauce-base-sauce-mother-sauce-or-kung-po-sauce.
17. Will Sellick, The Imperial African Cookery Book (London: Jeppestown
Press, 2010), 214.

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18.  Eliza Leslie, Directions for Cookery, in Its Various Branches: Forty-Ninth
Edition, Thoroughly Revised with Additions (Philadelphia: H. C. Baird, 1853), n.p.
19. Ibid.
20. “Austin Jewish Community BBQ Sauce,” Food Dictator, December 30,
2014, https://www.thefooddictator.com/austin-jewish-community-bbq-sauce.
21.  Maggi sauce gets its umami from hydrolyzed soy protein, yeast extract, and
sodium glutamate, and it is slightly tangy due to citric and acetic acids.
22.  It’s interesting that ketchup, the quintessential Western condiment—which
originated in southeastern Asia under Chinese influence—has found its way back into
Chinese cuisine, at least in the kind of Chinese cooking that is common in the West.

AFTERWORD

1.  Quoted in Nora Ephron, “Critics in the World of the Rising Souffle (or Is It
Meringue?),” New York Magazine, September 30, 1968.
2. Athenaeus, The Deipnosophistae, trans. Charles Burton Gulick (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1927–1941), 9:169.

181
 REFERENCES

Allen, Gary. Can It! The Perils and Pleasures of Preserving Food. London: Reak-
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———. The Herbalist in the Kitchen. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007.
Anonymous. The Housekeeper’s Guide to Preserved Meats, Fruits, Vegetables, &c.
London: Crosse & Blackwell, 1890.
———. A Proper Newe Booke of Cokerye. London: Lant and Bankes, 1545; repr.
1560. https://archive.org/stream/b21530191/b21530191_djvu.txt.
Anthimus. Anthimus, De observatione ciborum: On the Observance of Foods. Edited
and translated by Mark Grant. Blackawton, Totnes, Devon, UK: Prospect Books,
1996.
Athenaeus. The Deipnosophistae. Translated by Charles Burton Gulick. Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927–1941. http://penelope.uchicago
.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Athenaeus.
“Austin Jewish Community BBQ Sauce.” Food Dictator. December 30, 2014.
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188
 INDEX

A.1. See steak sauce Anthimus, 17–18, 19

Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets Apicius, 7, 16
(Evelyn), 134–35 Appert, Nicolas-François, 34
Acetobacter aceti. See vinegar aromatics, 41, 56, 72, 103, 151, 155;
achat. See dipping sauces battuto, 71; mirepoix, 32, 39,
aekjeot. See fish sauce 41, 54–55, 65, 71, 83, 119, 169;
agliata. See aioli sofrito, 19, 39, 40, 71; sofritto, 71;
agliata bianca (white garlic sauce), 136 suppengruen, 71; trinity, 71
agristada. See lemon L’art de la cuisine française au dix-
agrodolce. See vinegar neuvième siecle (The art of French
aigre-doux. See vinegar cooking in the nineteenth century)
aioli, 40, 135–36, 144, 153, 154; (Carême), 25
agliata, 136–37; mujdei, 136; toum, aspic, 115
136, 137 Athenaeus, 3, 7–8, 9, 169
ajbap. See dipping sauces au jus, 83–84, 89
ajika. See dipping sauces Austin Jewish Community BBQ sauce.
ajilimójili, 156 See barbecue sauce
ajvar. See dipping sauces avgolemono. See lemon
Albert sauce, 150
alegar. See vinegar baba ganoush: kashke bademjan, 45;
amandine, 133 melitzanosaláta, 42, 44; mirza
amlou, 45 ghasemi, 44–45; mouttabal, 44; naz
anchoïade provençale. See mayonnaise khatoon, 90; salat ḥatzilim, 44
angmo daoiu. See Worcestershire bagna cauda. See garlic sauce

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bagoong. See fish pastes bumbu pecel. See peanut sauces

barbecue sauce, 15, 50, 63, 68, butter, 10, 23, 26–27, 32, 33, 35, 39,
99, 102, 160–64; Austin Jewish 53–57, 68, 70, 92, 108, 117, 118,
Community, 164; char siu, 156, 119, 121, 123, 130, 140, 144, 147,
165; Dorothy Lynch Home Style 150, 156, 160, 161, 168; beurre
Dressing, 164–65; sha cha jiang, à la bourguignonne, 150; beurre
156–57; siu haau, 156 blanc, 132, 133, 151, 158; beurre
battuto. See aromatics manié, 118, 148; beurre maitre
bazhe. See garlic sauce d’hotel, 150–51; beurre noisette, 73,
bean sauce: chunjang, 116; hoisin, 74, 133; beurre rouge, 133, 158;
116, 156, 165; tianmianjiang, 116; butterfat, 112, 127, 132, 133, 142,
tuong den, 116 143; cocoa, 166–67; ghee, 74, 128;
beurre à la bourguignonne. See butter monter au beurre, 133; niter kibbeh,
beurre blanc. See butter 74
beurre maitre d’hotel. See butter
beurre manié. See butter cacik. See dipping sauces
beurre noisette. See butter Café de Paris sauce, 156
beurre rouge. See butter cameline sauce, 16, 19–20; salsa
bigarrade sauce. See sauce espagnole camillina, 19; sawse camelyne, 20
black vinegar. See vinegar camp ketchups. See ketchup
The Boke of Keruynge (The book of canard à l’orange. See sauce espagnole
carving) (de Worde), 21 Cannon, Poppy, 169
bolognese. See ragù Carême, Antoine, 25–28, 37, 51, 52,
The Book of Sent Soví, 18–19, 98 61, 63, 136, 149, 169, 173n5
bouillabaisse, 10 caroenum, 66
Bovril, 33 Caruso sauce, 156
brigade de cuisine. See Escoffier, catchup/catsup. See ketchup
Auguste chamoy, 97
Brillat-Savarin, Jean Antheleme, 28–29, char siu. See barbecue sauce
35, 94, 100; osmazome, 29, 33 checca. See tomato sauce
brine, 9, 29, 66, 70–71, 74–75, 82, 97, cheese sauces: cheddar sauce, 147;
155 sauce mornay, 147
Brock, Alice May, 63 cheongju, 70
broth, 13, 17, 19, 34, 41, 68, 84, 98, chermoula, 93
118, 134, 135, 156, 165; dodder, Child, Julia, 15, 57
9–10 chile oils, 80; ma la oil, 73, 102; olio
brown sauce. See sauce espagnole di peperoncino, 73; Szechuan hot
budu. See fish sauce oil, 72

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chile pastes, 87, 106; ají amarillo, 63; Le cuisinier François (La Varenne), 23
doubanjiang, 67, 157; gochujang, Cumberland sauce, 123, 158
47, 63, 67; la jiao jiang, 104–5; curry pastes (krung gaeng): green, 102,
nam phriks, 102, 104 103; mussaman, 102, 104; orange,
chili, 33, 162; Cincinnati, 109; con 102–3; red, 102; shitor din, 104;
carne, 109, 121, 178n7; dogs, 109 yellow, 102, 104
chili sauce, 105, 154, 162, 164, 166;
Thai sweet chili sauce, 104. See also dashi, 68, 69, 78
sambal daughter sauces, 31, 40, 47, 52, 57,
chiltomate, 88–89 61, 108, 147
chimichurri, 19, 50, 92–93; llajwa, 93; defrutum, 66
pebre, 93 The Deipnosophistae (Athenaeus), 3,
Chinese restaurant brown sauce, 158 7–8, 169
Chinese sweet-and-sour sauce, 165 demi-glace, 31, 33–34, 55, 57, 67, 133,
chocolate gravy. See gravy 148, 149
chocolate syrup, 167, 167 De re coquinaria, 7, 11
chunjang. See bean sauce de Worde, Wynkyn, 21
chutney, 159; imli, 46, 83; Major Diderot, Denis, 22–23
Grey’s, 162; saunth, 46; tamatar dipping sauces, 45–46, 49, 83, 87,
kasundi, 46 117; achat, 166; ajbap, 90; ajika,
cocktail sauce, 97, 100; Marie Rose, 90; ajvar, 90; cacik, 143; filfel
151–52. See also Russian dressing chuma, 89; Filipino sour dipping
colaturi di alici. See fish sauce sauce, 155; fina’denne, 155;
collagen, 65, 67, 115 haydari, 143; jajeek, 143; jeow mak
combination gravy. See gravy len, 89; kpakpo shito, 89; mojo, 89;
comeback sauce. See Russian dressing muhammara, 89–90; nam chim,
cranberry sauce, 123, 124 102, 166; nam chim chaeo, 166;
crema. See sour cream nam chim kai, 46, 166; nam chim
crème anglaise, 134 suki, 166; nam chim taengkwa, 166;
crème anglaise collée, 134 nam chim thale, 166; nuóc leo, 165–
crème Chantilly. See foams 66; raita, 46, 139, 143; sahawiq,
crème fraîche. See sour cream 89; sawsawan, 80; shito, 102, 104;
crème légère. See foams skhug, 89; skyronnes, 144; sukang
Creole sauce (sauce picante), 107. See maanghang, 80; tentsuyu, 77–78;
also tomato sauce tonkatsu, 154–55; toumya, 136;
criollo, 88 tzatziki, 42, 139, 143; wasakaka,
Crosse & Blackwell, 34, 35, 37, 93, 89; zhug, 89
174n26 distillation, 12, 66, 68, 79

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doenjang, 47, 67 75; nuóc mám gung, 46; nuóc mám

donkey sauce. See aioli me, 46; padaek, 93; patís, 75, 88,
Dorothy Lynch Home Style Dressing. 155; phrik nam pla, 75; pla ra, 63,
See barbecue sauce 75–76; shottsuru, 76; tiparos, 75;
doubanjiang. See chile pastes tirk khngay, 46; tirk trey chu p’em,
duck sauce, 104 46; tirk umpel, 46; yeesu, 75
foams, 111–13, 136, 150; crème
egusi, 111, 175n11 Chantilly, 112; crème légère, 134;
Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné mousseline, 112; nondairy topping,
des sciences, des arts et des métiers 112; whipped cream, 112, 134;
(Diderot), 22 zabaglione, 112–13, 134
ensalada derepollo. See Russian The Forme of Cury, 19–20
dressing Francatelli, Charles Elmé, 149
“Epimeles” (De re coquinaria), 11 fry sauce. See Russian dressing
Escoffier, Auguste, 28, 37, 51–57, 61, ful medammes. See fava
62–63, 64, 67, 117, 143, 145, 147,
149, 150, 152, 157, 169 galangal (Cyperus longus), 20, 21, 87,
Evelyn, John, 134–35 103, 104, 137
galantine, 21, 22–23
fava (fáva), 41, 42; ful medammes, 44 Galen, 18, 142
fermentation, 65, 70, 76–77, 95, 96, ganjang. See soy sauce
139, 140, 144 garlic sauce: allioli, 40; aioli, 40, 135–
Fieri, Guy, 135–36 37, 144, 153, 154; bagna cauda,
filet gumbo, 119–20 138; bazhe, 137; refrito de ajo, 41;
filfel chuma. See dipping sauces satsivi, 137; skordaliá, 41, 42, 137;
Filipino sour dipping sauce. See tarator, 90, 137, 143
dipping sauces garum, 9, 12, 29, 33, 70, 74–75,
fina’denne. See dipping sauces 172n14; garum piperatum, 10;
fish pastes: bagoong, 75; mahyawa, 75 meligarum, 76; oenogarum, 11, 76;
fish sauce, 9, 10, 12, 14, 31, 33, 71, oxygarum, 11, 76
83, 89, 95, 103, 104, 105, 119, gastrique. See vinegar
155, 165, 166; aekjeot, 111; budu, The Gastronomic Regenerator (Soyer),
75–76; colaturi di alici, 76; gyosho, 31
76; hishia, 76; hom ha, 75, 150; ghee. See butter
ikanago-shoyu, 75, 76; ishiru, 75, giâm gạo. See vinegar
76; ketjap-ikan, 75; kkanari aecjeot, glace de viande, 65, 115
76; mulchi aecjeot, 76; nam chim gochujang. See chile pastes
kai, 46, 166; ngan pya ye chet, 46; gorloder. See horseradish
nuóc chám, 46, 75; nuóc mám, 46, grandes sauces, 26–28

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gravy, 1, 8, 10–11, 15, 33, 34, 78, 83, huangjiu, 69–70

117, 120–22; bread, 84; chocolate, hummus, 41–42, 90, 137; bi tahini,
120–21; combination, 121; red-eye, 44; choúmous, 42; purée of
68, 120; sausage (sawmill), 121; chickpeas, 44
Sunday, 107 humors, 17–18
Greek yogurt. See yogurt hydrolysis, 70
green sauce, 21, 22, 23, 91–93, 154;
grüne soße, 92; salsa verd, 19; salsa ikanago-shoyu. See fish sauce
verde, 40, 88; sauce gribiche, 92; infusion, 12, 65, 66–67, 155
sauce verte au pain, 92. See also ishiru. See fish sauce
pesto itepsima, 66
Grey Poupon. See mustard
grüne soße. See green sauce jajeek. See dipping sauces
guacamole, 49, 49–50 jeow mak len. See dipping sauces
gula kabung, 76 jus lié, 84
gyosho. See fish sauce Juvenal, 10

hanh la phi, 73 kasundi. See horseradish

harissa, 42, 43, 89 kaymak. See sour cream
Harvey’s sauce, 159–60 kecap. See soy sauce
haydari. See dipping sauces ketchunez. See Russian dressing
Heinz, Henry John, 37, 96 ketchup (catchup/catsup), 1, 15, 50,
Heinz (company), 37, 101, 152–53, 63, 67, 77, 93–97, 101, 104, 107,
162, 164 117, 136, 150, 151, 152–53, 154,
Henry Bain sauce, 162 161, 165, 181n22; camp, 95;
Hess, Karen, 94 ê-chiap, 93; mushroom, 33, 93, 94,
hishia. See fish sauce 95, 159–60; oyster, 94; tkemali, 96;
hogao, 71, 86 walnut, 93–94, 95
hoisin. See bean sauce ketjap-ikan. See fish sauce
hollandaise, 1, 25, 55–56, 61, 67, 112, Kewpie. See mayonnaise
130, 134, 148, 165; sauce blonde, khrenovina. See horseradish
52–53; sauce parisienne, 53 kithul peni, 66
hom ha. See fish sauce kkanari aecjeot. See fish sauce
horseradish, 94, 95, 97, 150, 151, 153, koikuchi. See soy sauce
160, 162; gorloder, 100; kasundi, komezu. See vinegar
46, 100–101; khrenovina, 100; kpakpo shito. See dipping sauces
wasabi, 95, 99, 112 krung gaeng. See curry pastes
HP sauce. See steak sauce kurozu. See vinegar

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Lactobacillus, 76, 140, 142 mâst-chekide/mâst-musir/mâst-o-khiâr.

la jiao jiang. See chile pastes See yogurt
laser sauces, 11, 82 mayochup. See Russian dressing
La Varenne, Francois Pierre, 23, 118 mayokêtchup. See Russian dressing
lecithin, 98, 129, 130, 131, 135, 136 mayonnaise, 1, 15, 28, 44, 92, 62,
Lee Kum Lee. See oyster sauce 128–30, 131–32, 134, 135, 136,
Leloir, Luis Frederico, 152 140, 144, 151, 152–53, 154–55,
lemon, 27, 32, 39, 42, 44, 45, 46, 160, 162, 179n4; anchoïade
55–56, 63, 69, 83, 87, 89, 90, 91, provençale, 154; Kewpie, 131;
92, 93, 100, 102, 110, 111, 129, maionese, 39, 40; “Russian salad,”
130, 133, 136, 137, 139, 140, 152; Miracle Whip, 131. See also
143, 148, 151, 152, 154, 155, 157, Russian dressing
158, 161, 162; agristada, 134, McGee, Harold, 150
165; avgolemono, 41, 134, 165; meligarum. See garum
latholémono, 41; terbiye, 134 meunière, 133
les fonds. See mother sauces mignonette, 56, 90, 91
Leslie, Eliza, 119–20, 159–60 mihyang, 70
Li Ji, 13 mileram. See sour cream
Li Jinshang, 47, 49 milk, 10, 19, 30, 53, 54, 68, 73,
Linnaeus, 22, 24 108, 120–21, 124, 127–28, 129,
Lipton’s onion dip, 141 139–41; buffalo, 142; butterfat,
liquamen, 9, 11, 14, 76, 82, 93, 112, 127, 128, 132, 133, 142, 143;
172n14 buttermilk, 92, 121, 139, 140, 142;
llajwa. See chimichurri coconut, 74, 165, 166; cream, 26,
27, 31, 32, 63, 70, 112, 121, 127,
maafe. See peanut sauces 128, 133, 136, 139, 140, 141, 142,
maceration, 12, 65, 66, 97, 155 144, 147, 148, 149, 150, 154, 156,
maesil cheong, 70 160, 167, 168, 179n1; nonfat, 128.
Maggi sauce, 164 See also foams; sour cream; yogurt
mahyawa. See fish pastes mint sauce, 93
Maillard reaction, 29, 65, 71, 83, 119, Miracle Whip. See mayonnaise
132, 168 mirepoix. See aromatics
Maille. See mustard mirin, 68–69, 70, 77, 78, 82, 131, 155
maionese. See mayonnaise moambe. See peanut sauces
Major Grey’s. See chutney mojito isleño, 156
ma la oil. See chile oils mojo. See dipping sauces
Marie Rose. See cocktail sauce mole, 110, 122; poblano, 13, 50
Martino, Maestro, 136 molecular gastronomy, 2, 64

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Monascus purpureus, 79 Oxford sauce, 123

monkey gland sauce, 159 oxygarum. See garum
monter au beurre. See butter oxyporium. See vinegar
mortaria, 11 oyster catsup. See ketchup
mostalla. See mustard oyster sauce, 47, 48, 49, 116, 156, 158;
“mother.” See vinegar háoyóu, 47; Lee Kum Lee, 47, 49
mother sauces, 39, 47, 52–57, 61, 63,
67, 84, 102, 134, 138, 147, 169 padaek. See fish sauce
mousseline. See foams patís. See fish sauce
muhammara. See dipping sauces pavlaka. See sour cream
mujdei. See aioli peanut butter, 105, 137, 166, 178n6
mulchi aecjeot. See fish sauce peanut sauces: bumbu pecel, 137;
murri. See garum maafe, 137; moambe, 137; salsa de
mustard, 1, 15, 21, 22–23, 35, 46, 50, cachuate y chile de árbol, 105, 107;
62, 67, 75, 83, 92, 95, 97–101, salsa macha, 107; saté, 105, 107,
102, 123, 128, 135, 147, 149, 150, 137
153, 154, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, pearà, 9
164, 177n12; Dijon, 100; Grey pebre. See chimichurri
Poupon, 100; Maille, 100; mostalla, pectin, 122–23, 125, 143
98; Pommery, 100 pekmez, 66
penne alla vodka, 70
nabîdh raihâni, 12 perilla (Perilla frutescens), 73
nam chim. See dipping sauces pesto, 11, 13, 19, 93; persillade, 91;
nam phriks. See chile pastes pesto alla calabrese, 91; pesto alla
naz khatoon. See baba ganoush genovese, 90–91; pesto alla siciliana,
ni-kiru, 68 91; pistou, 91; tapenade, 91
niter kibbeh. See butter Peterson, James, 64
nitsume, 68 petimezi, 66
nondairy topping. See foams Petronius, 10
nuóc leo. See dipping sauces phrik nam pla. See fish sauce
nuóc mám. See fish sauce picada, 39, 40, 50
Pickapeppa. See steak sauce
De observatione ciborum (On the pico de gallo, 88–89; salsa bandera, 89
observance of foods) (Anthimus), 17 pili-pili, 88
oenogarum. See garum pil-pil, 40
Orosa, María Y., 96 pipian, 13, 50, 110
ortolans, 11, 113 pistou. See pesto
Owensboro dip, 162 plum sauce, 116, 117

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pomegranate molasses, 44, 66 salsa de cachuate y chile de árbol. See

Pommery. See mustard peanut sauces
ponzu, 69, 82 salsa de tinta, 40
poutine, 121–22; Chinoise, 122 salsa de tomate rojo. See tomato sauce
salsa golf. See Russian dressing
quark. See yogurt salsa macha. See peanut sauces
Quin’s sauce, 160 salsa roja, 88
salsa rosado. See Russian dressing
ragù: bolognese, 108, 109, 122; savore salsa vizcaina, 40
sanguino, 109 salt, 3–4, 174n8
“Raising Cane.” See Russian dressing salvitxada. See romesco
raita. See dipping sauces; yogurt sambal, 102, 104; nasi goreng, 47;
raspberry vinaigrette. See vinaigrette oelek, 47, 87
red cooking, 78 sari sari sauce, 88
red-eye gravy. See gravy Sa-te. See shacha
red sauce. See tomato sauce saté. See peanut sauces
remoulade/rémoulade: 130 Sauce satsivi. See garlic sauce
Remoulade, 62–63; French salad The Satyricon (Petronius), 10
dressing, 62; tartar sauce, 144, 153; sauce africaine. See sauce espagnole
Thousand Island dressing, 153–54 sauce à la beyrout, 33
romesco, 40, 50, 110–11; salvitxada, sauce à l’italienne, 31–32
111; xató, 111 sauce allemande, 27, 52, 133, 148
rouille, 10 sauce américaine. See sauce béchamel
roux, 23, 26–28, 39, 41, 53–55, 63, sauce andalouse, 152
107, 117, 118–19, 148, 160, 165 sauce béchamel, 26–27, 40, 41, 53,
“Royal Sauce,” 66 54, 156; besciamella, 39; sauce
Russian dressing, 152–53; comeback américaine, 147, 180n2; sauce
sauce, 151; ensalada derepollo, mornay, 147; sauce soubise, 147,
151; fry sauce, 153; ketchunez, 153; 148; white sauce, 8, 31, 32, 33, 39,
mayochup, 152–53; mayokêtchup, 53, 94, 128, 148
152; “Raising Cane,” 153; salsa sauce bordelaise, 67, 111
golf, 152; salsa rosado, 152 sauce bourguignonne, 133
sauce charcutière. See sauce espagnole
sahawiq. See dipping sauces sauce chasseur. See sauce espagnole
sake, 66, 68, 78, 80, 155 sauce chateaubriand, 151
salad dressing, 15, 50, 131, 134, 151, sauce espagnole, 27, 39, 41, 54–55, 57,
154, 160, 165, 180n12; French, 62 133; bigarrade sauce, 149; canard
salsa bandera. See pico de gallo à l’orange, 82, 149; sauce africaine,
salsa cruda, 88 150; salsa española, 41; salsa

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spagnola, 39; sauce charcutière, skyr. See yogurt

149; sauce chasseur, 149 skyronnes. See dipping sauces
sauce gribiche. See green sauce smântână/smetana/smietana. See sour
sauce mornay. See cheese sauces; sauce cream
béchamel Smith, Eliza, 94–95, 169
sauce picante. See Creole sauce smoke, 111, 113
sauce poivrade, 119 sofrito/sofritto. See aromatics
sauce Robert, 23, 149 Sokolov, Raymond, 28, 64, 152, 169
sauce rouennaise, 111 Soltner, André, 117, 169
sauce soubise. See sauce béchamel solute, 65, 66, 67, 130
sauce velouté, 26–28, 52, 53–54, 133, solvent, 65, 66, 67, 72
152; salsa vellutata, 39; supreme sot ca chua, 166
sauce, 148–49 sour cream, 63, 92, 140–42, 144,
sauce verte au pain. See green sauce 154, 179n2, 180n12; crema, 141,
sauce vierge, 155 42; crème fraîche, 139, 140–41,
sausage gravy. See gravy 148; kaymak, 142; mileram,
savore sanguino. See ragù 142; pavlaka, 142; smântână,
sawmill gravy. See gravy 142, 179n2; smetana, 141, 142;
sawsawan. See dipping sauces schmand, 142; smietana, 142; tejföl,
sawse madame, 20 142; vrhnje, 142
Scappi, Bartolomeo, 12–13, 17, 66, Soyer, Alexis Benoist, 30, 30–37, 51,
92, 116 56; Soyer’s Osmazome Food, 33;
schmand. See sour cream Soyer’s Sultana Sauce, 35–36
sesame oil, 47, 67, 68, 73, 102, 105, soy sauce, 12, 94, 154, 155, 156, 157,
157, 165, 166 159, 161, 165; ganjang, 77; kecap,
shacha, 102; Sa-te, 87 77; kecap asin, 77; kecap manis, 47,
sha cha jiang. See barbecue sauce 77; koikuchi, 77; shiro, 77; shoyu,
Shanxi vinegar. See vinegar 77, 82; tamari, 68, 77; usukuchi, 77
Shaoxing, 69–70 sriracha, 1, 49, 63, 87, 155, 163
shiro. See soy sauce ssal-sikcho. See vinegar
shito. See dipping sauces starch, 28, 39, 47, 63, 82, 115,
shitor din. See curry pastes 116, 117–19, 120, 122, 123–25,
shottsuru. See fish sauce 127, 138, 140–41, 160, 179n8;
shoyu. See soy sauce arrowroot, 84, 117, 123–24, 125;
Shrewsbury sauce, 158 corn, 68, 84, 99, 117, 124, 125,
silphium, 11 131, 134, 143, 164, 165; kudzu,
siqqu. See garum 123, 124–25; potato, 125, 165; rice,
siu haau. See barbecue sauce 76, 123, 164, 166; tapioca, 111,
skhug. See dipping sauces 123, 125; wheat, 125

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steak sauce: A.1., 15, 35, 101, tkemali. See ketchup

121, 162, 164; HP sauce, 101; toi phi dau, 73
Pickapeppa, 35, 101 tomato sauce, 50, 107–10, 120, 151,
stock, 9, 13, 21, 26, 27, 33, 39, 40, 41, 160, 161; checca, 108; red sauce,
52, 53–55, 65, 67, 68, 78, 83, 108, 32, 56–57, 107–9; salsa de tomate
116, 118, 120, 121, 133, 136, 148, rojo, 109; salsa di pomodoro alla
150, 151, 158, 160, 165, 166, 169 spagnola, 31; salsa pomodoro,
sugo all’amatriciana. See tomato sauce 39; sáltsa domátas, 41; sauce aux
sugo alla puttanesca. See tomato sauce tomates, 32; sauce tomate, 39,
suka. See vinegar 56–57, 107; sugo all’amatriciana,
sukang iloko. See vinegar 108; sugo alla puttanesca, 56,
sukang maanghang. See dipping sauces 107–8; summer sauce, 108–9;
summer sauce. See tomato sauce Sunday gravy, 107; vermicelli co le
Sunday gravy. See tomato sauce pomodoro, 107. See also ragù
suppengruen. See aromatics tonkatsu. See dipping sauces
supreme sauce. See sauce velouté toum. See aioli
Szechuan hot oil. See chile oils toumya. See dipping sauces
trinity. See aromatics
Tabasco, 15, 63, 85, 86, 87, 97, 104, tucupi, 111
121, 148, 151, 152, 154, 161, 162, tu’o’ng, 67
164 tuong den. See bean sauce
tahini, 1, 41, 42, 44, 45, 90, 137 tzatziki. See dipping sauces; yogurt
Taillevent. See Tirel, Guillaume
tamari. See soy sauce umami, 12, 14, 29, 33, 46–47, 49, 68,
tapenade. See pesto 71, 75, 76, 82, 89, 93, 94, 96, 102,
taramosaláta, 42 103, 104, 116, 122, 131, 132, 151,
tarator. See garlic sauce 154, 156–57, 160, 162, 164, 181n21
tartar sauce. See remoulade/rémoulade umezu. See vinegar
tejföl. See sour cream usukuchi. See soy sauce
tentsuyu. See dipping sauces
terbiye. See lemon verjuice, 13, 16, 19, 21, 23, 90, 92,
teriyaki, 68, 77 99–100, 165
Thousand Island dressing. See vermicelli co le pomodoro. See tomato
remoulade/rémoulade sauce
tianjin duliu. See vinegar Le viandier de Taillevent (Tirel), 16, 19
tianmianjiang. See bean sauce vinaigre de piña. See vinegar
Tirel, Guillaume (Taillevent), 16–17, 19 vinaigrette, 45, 73, 79, 128, 130, 131,
tisanes, 66 155, 180n12; cucumbers in, 134–

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35; latholémono, 41; lathóxsitho, 41; walnut ketchup. See ketchup

raspberry, 135 wasabi. See horseradish
vincotto, 66, 67 wasakaka. See dipping sauces
vinegar, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 27, whipped cream. See foams
31, 33, 39, 44, 46, 50, 55, 62, 69, Worcestershire, 1, 93, 101, 121, 147,
70, 75, 76, 78–83, 85, 87, 88, 89, 151, 152, 153, 154, 158, 160, 161,
90, 91–93, 96, 97, 100, 101, 102, 162; angmo daoiu, 77
104, 110, 111, 116, 117, 118, Wow-Wow sauce, 160
119, 129, 130, 133, 136, 137,
139, 140, 144, 148, 150, 153, xató. See romesco
155, 156, 159–60, 161, 164, 165, XO sauces, 49
166, 176n12; Acetobacter aceti, 78;
agrodolce, 12, 82; aigre-doux, 82; yeesu. See fish sauce
alegar, 83; balsamic, 66, 67, 78, 79, yellow sauce, 16–17, 22
80, 135; black, 79, 80, 83, 87, 102, yogurt, 41, 42, 44, 45, 140, 142–44;
158; cider, 78, 135, 162; gastrique, Greek, 142, 144; labneh, 45, 143;
82; giâm gạo, 80; komezu, 80; mâst-chekide, 143; mâst-musir,
kurozu, 80; Monascus purpureus, 143; mâst-o-khiâr, 143; pachadi,
79; “mother,” 79; oxymel, 67; 46; quark, 92, 144; raita, 46, 139,
oxyporium, 11, 82; Shanxi, 79–80, 143; skyr, 144; tzatziki, 42, 137,
81; sherry, 41; ssal-sikcho, 80; suka, 139, 143
80; sukang iloko, 80; tianjin duliu,
79, 80; umezu, 82; vinaigre de piña, zabaglione. See foams
78; vindaloo, 82; zaocu, 78 zaocu. See vinegar
vrhnje. See sour cream zhug. See dipping sauces

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