SAUCES

AN INSIGHT IN TO WORLD OF SAUCES

DEFINITION

Sauce is one of the most substantial and crucial ingredient in the continental cuisine, the literal meaning of sauce is to add relish i.e add taste to something. In ancient times when there were no refrigeration facilities or preservation of food is available chefs used to mask the dishes with highly seasoned and flavored sauces so that the offending smell of deteriorating meat and vegetable can be hided, at times the dishes doesn’t have the distinctive taste of main ingredient but the taste of sauce only.

But later sauces become backbone of continental cuisine and the sauces were not only used to enhance the flavor but sauces can be used in many other ways.

Literally sauce means ‘to add relish’, sauce can be defined as a liquid or semi liquid flavorful preparation, used to flavor, season and enhance taste of a dish, made of a variety of different ingredients which imparts their goodness into the sauce to form distinctive flavor. Sauces are usually thickened.

USES OF SAUCES

• Sauce improves flavor of the dish
• Sauce increase the eye appeal of dish
• Sauce can be used as garnish of dish
• Sauce can be used as binding agent in a dish
• Sauce can be used to help digestion of dish
• Sauce can be used as a dressing salads
• Sauce can be used as filling of sandwiches
• Sauce can be used to give name to dish

PARTS OF SAUCE

All the sauces can be divided into its distinctive parts

LIQUID

Liquid is the most important ingredient as it not only forms the body of sauce but it acts as a solvent to dissolve all the flavor of different ingredients and form a distinctive flavored sauce.

Generally following liquids are used to make a sauce.

Milk as for making white sauce

White stock as for making veloute sauce

Brown stock as for making espagnole and tomato sauce

Clarified butter as for making hollandaise sauce

THICKENING AGENT

For sauces to have a desired texture and to make it possible to stick to the food it should have certain thickening and that can be obtained by using certain thickening agents.

The most commonly used thickening agent used in continental cuisine is flour, other starch thickening agents like arrow root, corn starch, potato, bread crumbs, rice flour can also be used.

Sometimes the sauce can be thickened by blood,egg yolk, tapioca,beurre manie etc.

The most commonly used thickening agent is roux, roux is a combination of equal quantities of fat and refined flour, cooked to a particular stage so as to achieve a desired color, flavor and consistency in a sauce.

Starch in flour helps in thickening by absorption of water in its cells known as gelatinization, in gelatinization starch cell can absorb about six times of water as its weight and after that the starch cell bursts and become soluble in water. When starch gets dissolved, it thickens the liquid.

• To get a desired color
• To remove the raw taste of starch
• To regulate water absorption power of starch
• To control the thickening of liquid
• To have a good flavor of sauce

The roux is cooked to various degrees.

FATS USED IN MAKING THE ROUX

There are a variety of starches used to make roux.

Butter: - it is used to make the best sauces and used in clarified form because

It has best flavor as compared to other fats.

It has very little moisture so it doesn’t gelatinize the starch.

But butter is very expensive.

Margarine: - It is used instead of butter as it is more economical but its flavor is infrerior to that of butter.

Animal fat: - Certain animal fat can also be used to make roux, as it is very cheap but it should be used only with appropriate sauces e.g chicken fat with chicken veloute, beef lard or dripping for sauce that can be served with beef dishes.

Vegetable oil or seasoning:- very rarely used because doesn’t have flavor and high melting point, gives unpleasant taste in mouth but used because of economy factor.

FLOURS USED IN ROUX

The thickening power of roux depends upon two factors
The starch content of flour and Degree of cooking to which the flour is cooked.

Depending on the starch content, today there are various types of flours like cake flour, bread flour, whole wheat flour etc.

PREPARATION OF ROUX

• The process of cooking starch to regulate the water absorption power is known as dexterinization.
• The more the cooking of roux is done the absorption power of starch will decrease.

On the basis of color and varying degrees of cooking there are following Types of Roux

WHITE ROUX – The color of roux almost remain white, used to thicken white sauces, prepared by cooking the roux at a low temperature so as to remove only the raw taste of starch. The cooking should be stopped when roux has a chalk like and frothy texture. High temperature and long duration of cooking should be avoided as it will result into coloring and overcooking.

BLONDE OR PALE ROUX- Blonde roux is made when it is cooked for a slightly longer time so as to achieve a pale color, used for thickening sauces based on white stocks like fish veloute.

BROWN ROUX- when roux is cooked till it has a light brown color and a roasted nutty aroma, cooking should be done at low temperature and for longer time so that even cooking and better flavor can be developed. Brown is used for making espagnole sauce or sauces made with brown stocks.

Golden rule of mixing roux with liquid

a) liquid may be added to roux or roux can be added to liquid.

b) if liquid is hot roux should be cold, if liquid is cold roux should be hot.