Sauce

A KEY REASON THAT THE FOOD YOU MAKE at home tastes different from the food you’re served in a decent restaurant is that the restaurant makes its own stock. That’s why stock is called fond de cuisine, the “foundation of cooking.” One might also say that the main way a chef’s plate differs from a plate you serve is sauce.

About midway through my culinary school adventures, I began to notice the ubiquity of sauce. Everything, but everything, got a sauce. You didn’t even think about a dish without a sauce to go with it, whether you were making a canapé, an appetizer, a main course, or a dessert. Even soups got sauced! That’s what the dollop of crème fraîche in a curried butternut soup is: it is the finishing flavor, enriching, smoothing, piquing with its acidity, as well as adding a final visual flourish.