Aillade is a very thick sauce based on a purée of garlic. Walnut kernels are blended with garlic, walnut oil is added, then seasoned with salt to taste. You can do this in a mortar or pestle, or in a food processor or blender. It is often served with duck as a side sauce for…
French Sauces
Aioli à la greque
Aioli à la greque is a very thick vinaigrette sauce served with fish that has fried or boiled. The sauce is made with fresh breadcrumbs that have been sieved and soaked in milk, ground nuts (a mixture of walnuts, almonds and hazelnuts), and crushed garlic. To this mixture, oil, vinegar and lemon juice are added….
Allemande Sauce
Allemande Sauce is an enriched version of Sauce Velouté. Some people classify Allemande as a base or mother sauce. The reason for their confusion is that Allemande Sauce is itself used as the basis for many other sauces. Technically, though, it is and remains a “compound sauce” (“sauce dérivée”), one built upon a base sauce…
Banquière Sauce
Banquière Sauce is a classic French sauce made from chicken stock, cream, butter and a few tablespoons of Madeira, along with a few slivers of truffle.
Béarnaise Sauce
Béarnaise sauce is Hollandaise sauce with shallots and tarragon added. It can be served with meat or fish. When making Hollandaise sauce, you simmer vinegar to reduce it. To turn the sauce into a Béarnaise, you add chopped shallots at this point, so that they will cook and soften at the same time. You then…
Beurre Blanc
Beurre Blanc (“white butter”) is actually a sauce, not a type of butter. And it’s pale yellow, not white. It’s a creamy, thick, but light-textured pale yellow sauce made from butter, shallots, white wine, and white wine vinegar. It has a slightly sweet, slightly tangy taste conveyed by a velvety, underlying richness. The sauce is…
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…
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”)…
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….
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…
Gastrique
A Gastrique is a subtle, syrupy, French sweet and sour sauce. It can be used on its own as a drizzle, particularly with meats such as pork, game, or strongly-flavoured fowl, or added to sauces, as it is in classic versions of Duck à l’orange. A simple version is made by melting white sugar until…
Hollandaise Sauce
Hollandaise Sauce is an egg-based sauce flavoured with an acid such as lemon or vinegar. There are many different recipes and just as many opinions. The basic sauce starts as an emulsion of egg and water, to which butter is added, then something acidic to add flavour. Emulsion has to happen: if you just took…
Madeira Sauce
Madeira Sauce is a savoury French sauce used particularly with roasted chicken and beef. In the French sauce lexicon, this is classed as a brown sauce. Classically it is defined (by Larousse) as a demi-glace sauce with Madeira wine added to it, boiled down. A demi-glace sauce is espagnole sauce, with brown stock, a few…
Matelote Sauce
Matelote Sauce is made from red wine, butter, flour, shallots, sugar, salt and coarsely-ground black pepper. It is served warm, and should not be too thick. It is often served with eel. Language Notes Means “fish stew sauce.”
Melted Butter
In classical French cooking, a very simple sauce is made by melting butter slowly, then seasoning the melted butter to taste with salt, pepper and a few drops of lemon juice. It’s used on foods cooked in water, such as vegetables that have been boiled, or fish that has been poached.
Meunière Butter
In classical French cooking, Meunière Butter (“beurre meunière”) is a very simple sauce of browned butter (aka “Beurre Noisette”) flavoured with lemon. You make it by melting butter until it has started to brown, and seasoning it to taste with salt, white pepper and a few drops of lemon juice. It’s used in fish “à…
Noisette Butter
Noisette Butter (meaning “nut butter” in French) is a simple sauce that is made soley from butter. It is butter that has been melted and cooked until it starts to turn light brown, but not as dark brown as for brown butter. It is called “nut butter” because the browning gives it a tawny, nut…
Normande Sauce
CooksInfo.com has identified at least four sauces called Normande Sauce. Two versions, from classical French cooking, are for use with fish. Classic Version (1): combine in a saucepan a Velouté sauce (based on fish stock) with fish fumet and mushroom fumet; reduce over heat; add egg yolk and cream, then butter and more cream; strain….
Paloise Sauce
Paloise Sauce is made exactly as you would Béarnaise Sauce, except in place of the tarragon called for in Béarnaise, you use mint instead. Language Notes Paloise Sauce is namde after the town of Pau in the centre of the old French province of Béarn, located in south-west France on the border with Spain. Béarn…
Panade à la frangipane
Panade à la frangipane is a thick sauce made from egg yolk, butter, flour and milk. It is used to bind and thicken ground poultry and fish mixtures. It is also sometimes used as a filling. Unlike Crème Frangipane (almond pastry cream), no sugar is added — nor are there any almonds. Cooking Tips 1/2…
Parisienne Sauce
Parisienne Sauce is a room temperature cheese-based sauce that requires no cooking. It is used for cooked vegetables that are then being served cold or room temperature — classically, asparagus. Some modern sauces — such as a meat sauce with eggs and cream in it — are trying to hijack the name of Parisienne Sauce,…
Poivrade Sauce
There are two versions of Poivrade Sauce. Both version are for meat, but one is for game in particular. There is also a third, older version from the heyday of classical French cooking. Version One for meat A mirepoix of vegetables (e.g finely-diced vegetables) are softened in butter. Wine vinegar and white wine are added…
Provençal Sauce
Provençal Sauce is a sauce used in cooking in France. It is meant to conjure up images and memories of the Provence area of France. Recipes for the sauce vary. There are two main categories: with and without tomatoes. While many people now associate the Provence area with foods such as tomatoes, it’s important to…
Provencal Sauce (cold)
Sauce provençale froide (“provencal cold sauce”) is a sauce made in the Provence area of France. It is made room temperature and served room temperature with fish, grilled meats, or cold meats. It is is somewhat like another sauce from Provence, aoili, except that sauce provençale froide is somewhat more translucent than aoili. It is…