Dessert Sauces

Custard sauces.

Vanilla custard sauce, or crème anglaise, is presented early in this chapter. It is among the most basic preparations in dessert cookery. Chocolate or other flavors may be added to create varieties. See recipe.

Fruit purées.

These are simply purées of fresh or cooked fruits, sweetened with sugar. Other flavorings and spices are sometimes added. Some fruit sauces are thickened with cornstarch or other starch.

Raspberry sauce and strawberry sauce, two popular items, can be made by simply puréeing frozen sweetened berries or by puréeing fresh berries and adding sugar to taste. See also the recipe for Applesauce.

Syrups.

This is a broad category that includes such products as chocolate sauce and caramel sauce. An understanding of sugar cooking is necessary to produce many of these sauces.

The following recipes are popular examples of this category of sauce.