Sauces and Gravies

The words “sauce” and “salt” share a common Latin root, suggesting the flavor-enhancing function of sauces. Whether sweet or savory, hot or cold, and spanning textures from brothy liquid through velvety emulsion to chunky salsa, sauces are an “extra,” a luxury that in the nineteenth century carried hints of sin and gluttony. Even with this delicious potential, American—like English—sauces historically suffered a poor reputation. An eighteenth-century French visitor allegedly sniped that England was a nation of many religions but only one sauce. Although the tale may be apocryphal, writers such as Sarah Josepha Hale in The Good Housekeeper (second edition, 1841) agreed that the “French have a much greater variety of gravies than the English or Americans, who copy the English mode of cookery. Melted butter is with us the gravy for most meats.”