Today, we don’t think twice about making salad dressings or mayonnaise based on oil. Up until the end of the 1800s, though, if you didn’t live in Southern Europe with its ready access to olive oil, you might have been stumped. There were no vegetable oils yet available to you. The plethora of bottled vegetable…
Sauces
Brown Butter
Brown Butter (aka “beurre noir” meaning “blackened butter” in French) is butter that is cooked until it has deeply browned, to which capers and chopped parsley are then added. It’s then poured out into a dish. A tablespoon of vinegar is heated in the pan where the butter was browned, then added to the melted…
Brown Roux
Brown roux is roux (a starch and fat based thickener) which has been cooked until it is a dark brown. It thickens sauces and gives them a nutty taste.
Brown Sauce (English)
English Brown sauce is a commercial, bottled sauce. It is a thick, brown sauce that is like a slightly sweet, tangy steak sauce. It is made from apples, prunes, onions, malt vinegar, and seasonings. It is particularly popular with fried meats — either bacon or ham for breakfast, or fried meats for suppers. In North…
Butter Sauce
Butter Sauce is basically like a white sauce, but water or consommé is used instead of milk as the liquid. The sauce is usually used for vegetables or fish, or as the foundation for other sauces such as Albert Sauce. Classical French cooking recognizes three base versions of butter sauce. Butter Sauce (aka “Bâtarde Sauce”)…
Carbonara Sauce
Carbonara sauce is a sauce for pasta. The basic ingredients in Carbonara Sauce are eggs, cheese and pork fat. Throughout most of Italy pancetta is used as the pork element, except in Rome, where pork jowl (“Guancial”) is sometimes used. Cooking Tips If you use pancetta, bear in mind that pancetta is much saltier than…
Centennial Applecrabs
Centennial Applecrabs are somewhat oval shaped apples, 1 ½ to 2 inches (4 to 5 cm) wide. They have yellow skin almost entirely covered with red. Inside, their crisp, juicy, tender white flesh is tinged with pink. The trees start bearing fruit when young, but they may tend to bear only every other year. Centennial…
Chile con Queso
Chile con Queso is a “Mexican” cheese sauce with chiles in it, used as a dip or as a sauce over dishes such as enchiladas and burritos. The sauce is not really Mexican; it is actually more Tex-Mex. Some writers speculate that the inspiration for it may have been asadero cheese, roasted chiles and chorizo…
Chippie Sauce
Chippie Sauce is a condiment used in Edinburgh, Scotland on chips (aka “French Fries” in North America.) A rival to the traditional salt and vinegar, it is still pretty much unique to Edinburgh and is held by fans to be a defining cultural mark of the city. A “chippie” or “chippy” is a shop that…
Chiri-zu Sauce
Chiri-zu Sauce is a Japanese dipping sauce used for fried seafood, for sashimi, and for white fish. It is mildly spicy because it has Shichimi Togarashi in it. Cooking Tips 4 tablespoons lemon juice 4 tablespoons soy sauce or tamari 4 tablespoons grated daikon 2 tablespoons sake ¼ teaspoon Shichimi Togarashi 1 thinly sliced green…
Coronation Sauce
Coronation Sauce is a dead product. It was a light-coloured creamy sauce with a mild curry flavour and a fruity taste. Made by the Heinz Company (its full name was “Heinz Coronation Sauce”) and sold in 10.6 oz (315ml) bottles, it was meant as a shortcut way to make Coronation Chicken — you just poured…
Cranberry Sauce
Cranberry Sauce is a sweet condiment based on cranberries. It’s used along with savoury meals. There are two types of “Cranberry Sauce”, even though we often refer to both as just Cranberry Sauce: one is — well, sauce, and the second is a jelly, which is just a firmer version of the same sauce. Very…
Cream Gravy
Cream Gravy is a very thick, light coloured gravy flecked with crisp bits from the pan, made particularly in the American south. To make Cream Gravy, you leave a couple of tablespoons of the oil, lard or drippings in the frying pan along with the brown bits from the frying. You stir in some flour,…
Creamed Horseradish
There are two types of Horseradish Sauce, Creamed and Pickled. The pickled is more popular in North America; the Creamed is more popular in Britain. The Creamed tends to have a milder taste. To make creamed horseradish, grated Horseradish is mixed with a double-cream, white sauce or mayonnaise, or any combination of the three. If…
Cumberland Sauce
Cumberland Sauce is an English sweet and sour sauce used as an accompaniment to savoury meals. It is traditionally served with cold meats, especially venison, pork, lamb or turkey. Based on red currant jelly, it also has in it orange and lemon peel, orange and lemon juice, pepper, mustard, a dash of salt and port…
Drawn Butter Sauce
Drawn Butter Sauce is not the same as drawn butter (aka “clarified butter.”) In fact, it doesn’t even use drawn butter. It’s a light-coloured sauce, made from butter, white wheat flour, water, lemon juice and salt. Fannie Farmer, in her Boston Cooking School cookbook, added a pinch of pepper. If you were to do this,…
English Sauces
The English love their sauces just as much as the French love theirs, both savoury sauces and dessert sauces. Gravy is the most common sauce made at home, with variants such as onion gravy being popular. Other than gravy, perhaps the most common sauce made at home is a white sauce (which the French call…
Espagnole Sauce
Despite its name, Espagnole Sauce (“Spanish Sauce”) is not Spanish, but rather a brown sauce in classical French cooking used as the basis for many other sauces, such as Poivrade Sauce. There are three versions of it. Sauce espagnole graisse In a frying pan, soften up a mirepoix along with lean diced bacon in lard….
Fermented Black Beans
Fermented Black Beans are beans that have been transformed into a condiment for cooking. They will look a bit like small, black raisins and are slightly moist. They have a very salty, pungent flavour. To make Fermented Black Beans, cooked black soybeans are fermented in the water they were cooked in, then drained and mixed…
Finadene Sauce
Finadene Sauce is a sauce made in Guam. It is made from equal parts of soy sauce and lemon juice with chopped hot pepper and onion. It is meant to be fiery. Some versions for fish leave out the soy sauce. It is used as a condiment sauce to dip things in or to sprinkle…
Fish
Fish are aquatic animals that, with very rare exceptions, live their entire lives in the water. They can live in fresh or salt water. As far as the kitchen is concerned, there are two main types of fish: white fish, or blue fish.
Fish Sauces
A Fish Sauce is generally defined as a sauce made with fish as a main ingredient in the sauce, rather than as a sauce to be served with fish. Though versions have been made since Ancient Greece, most people now think of Fish Sauce as a fermented sauce made from fish throughout Asia, with regional…
French Sauces
Most of the Western world’s cooking is based on French sauces. Before the French Revolution, France had a highly-developed aristocracy. These had homes with great kitchens and great chefs who had lots of helpers, so the aristocracy got used to very labour-intensive sauces. And not just them: the wealthy merchant class with upper-class aspirations and…
Fry Sauce
Fry Sauce is a thick, smooth, pink-coloured condiment used sometimes as a burger sauce, but now primarily for dipping French Fries into. It is very popular in the American state of Utah. A basic recipe for it is one part ketchup, two parts mayonnaise. Other ingredients are then added: seasonings such as spices and /…