General Principles Governing the Preparation of Sauces

Sauces represent one of the most important components of cookery. It is they that have inspired and sustained the universal predominance of the French Cuisine; it is therefore impossible to devote too much care and attention to their preparation.

The basic component used in the production of sauces is a stock or gravy; it can be brown stock or Estouffade for making brown sauces, or clear gravy or white stock for making Veloutés. It is to the production of perfect stocks that the sauce cook should devote himself—the sauce cook who is, as the Marquis de Cussy remarked, ‘the enlightened chemist, the creative genius and the cornerstone of the edifice of superlative cookery’.