Le Cordon Bleu

Sauce Espagnole Grasse

Appears in
Cuisine Foundations
Cuisine Foundations

By Le Cordon Bleu

Published 2010

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Elements

Stock: Fonds brun

Liaison: Roux brun

Ingredients: Bacon, carrot, onion, thyme, bay leaf (bouquet garni), tomato paste

Derivatives: Sauce demi-glace with the addition of tomato paste and a longer cooking process

The sauce demi-glace is considered a mother sauce by Escoffier, however, if one applies the system of categorization, it is in fact a derivative of the sauce espagnole grasse.

Escoffier might have decided to consider a demi-glace a sauce based on the fact that it also serves as an intermediary sauce for many other sauces (bordelaise, Madère, périgourdine, poivrade), however, if you go back to the origins of the demi-glace, all sauces made from it make them derivatives of the sauce espagnole. This may explain why, up until Escoffier, sauce espagnole was sometimes referred to as la grande espagnole. Its role in sauce making was such that Jules Gouffé suggested that it was more appropriate to call it sauce Française.