Spherification

At first glance, this technique hardly seems to be relevant to sauce making. True, the little spheres can be stirred into a sauce and in essence function as a garniture much as capers might, but the real fascination begins when these spheres become an integral part of the sauce. A sauce can be deconstructed, with one or more essential flavor elements left out, and instead of being stirred into the sauce, encapsulated in spheres. Such an application might, for example, be used to ensure that the taste of truffles makes it through the complex array of ingredients in the sauce. If, for example, you take a sauce financière, leave out the truffle essence or juice, and instead seal the essence up in spheres, the spheres will pop in the mouth as the sauce is pressed against the tongue and the roof of the mouth, releasing a burst of truffle flavor.