Liaisons

An Overview

Appears in

Sauces: Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making

Published 1991

About

A liaison is an ingredient used to thicken liquids, transforming them into sauces. Until recently it was often consistency alone that distinguished a sauce from a broth; poaching liquids, stocks, and other flavorful liquids became sauces as soon as they were thickened, usually with starch. Today, the difference between a sauce and a broth is less clear, especially in contemporary kitchens where unbound but intensely flavored liquids are served with meats, fish, and vegetables.

Sauces are distinguished from broths and soups not only because they are thicker, but because they are more intensely flavored. Liaisons were used in ancient and medieval cooking as thickeners so that the sauces would cling to the foods they accompanied, making the food easier to eat with the fingers. These liaison-thickened sauces were further developed in the seventeenth century as an economical alternative to earlier sauces, which were essentially concentrated extracts made with enormous quantities of meat. For centuries since, sauces have been thickened not only to help them cling to food but to give them the look of highly concentrated and flavorful meat juices or cooking liquids.