Mediterranean Sauces

Southern French and other Mediterranean sauces are distinct from classic French sauces with their roux, concentrated stocks, and buttery emulsions. Most traditional Mediterranean sauces are pastes made by working various ingredients in a large mortar and pestle into what the French call a pommade and then spreading the sauces on cooked meats, seafood, or vegetables or whisking them into hot liquids such as fish soups, in the way aïoli is whisked into a bourride and rouille is whisked into a bouillabaisse. In older recipes these sauces are held together by and get much of their substance from bread (often soaked in fish broth or milk) and are flavored with indigenous ingredients such as anchovies (often fermented—or at least salted, used to make the sauce or condiment anchoïade), sea urchin roe (for oursinade, a magnificent thing), and olives, capers, and olive oil (for tapenade). When New World ingredients were introduced into European cooking, cooked potatoes began to replace the bread, chiles were rapidly adopted for their flavor and color, and later, tomatoes were used. Egg yolks, probably through the influence of classic French cooking, are now often added, converting the original pommades into rustic forms of mayonnaise, giving them a smoother texture but also making them more vulnerable to heat—a rouille or virtually any sauce made with egg yolks can’t be allowed to boil or the egg yolks will curdle (sauces containing a lot of flour are the exception).