Flavor in Sauces: Taste and Smell

The primary purpose of a sauce is to provide flavor in the form of a liquid with a pleasing consistency. It’s much easier to generalize about consistency, how it is created, and how it can go wrong, than to generalize about flavor. There are many thousands of different flavor molecules; they can be combined in untold numbers of ways, and different people perceive them differently. Still, it’s useful to keep a few basic facts about flavor in mind when constructing a sauce.