Leading Sauces

Appears in
Professional Cooking: 8th Edition
Professional Cooking

By Wayne Gisslen

Published 2014

  • About
One more time, let’s look at the three basic building blocks of sauce cookery, this time from a slightly different angle.
Liquid + Thickening agent = Leading sauce
Leading sauce + Additional flavorings = Small sauce

We have talked about five basic liquids for sauces: milk, white stock, brown stock, tomato purée (plus stock), and clarified butter. From these we get our five leading sauces, also known as grand sauces or mother sauces, as shown in Chart 8.1.

Chart 8.1 The Leading Sauces

Liquid Thickening Agent Leading Sauce
Milk + White roux = Béchamel sauce
White stock (veal, chicken, fish) + White or blond roux = Velouté (veal velouté, chicken velouté, fish velouté)
Brown stock + Brown roux = Brown sauce or espagnole
Tomato plus stock + (Optional roux, see Note) = Tomato sauce
Butter + Egg yolks = Hollandaise
Note: Roux is not used in all tomato sauces, as tomato purée is naturally thick.