In French cuisine, the mother sauces (, ), also known as () in French, are a group of sauces upon which many other sauces"daughter sauces" or are based. Different classifications of mother sauces have been proposed since at least the early 19th century.
The most common list of mother sauces in current use is:
In 1833, Marie-Antoine Carême described four grandes sauces (great sauces). In 1844, the French magazine Revue de Paris reported:
Different groups of mother and daughter sauces have been proposed by different chefs, varying in number and selection.
In 1833, Marie-Antoine Carême published a classification of French sauces in his reference cookbook LâÂÂart de la cuisine française au XIXe siècle ("The Art of French Cuisine in the 19th Century"). He called them Grandes et Petites sauces ("great and small sauces").
In this cookbook, Carême defined a sauce classification and listed four grandes sauces:
Carême classified numerous sauces as petites sauces.
In 1867, the French chef and pâtissier Jules Gouffé published Le livre de cuisine comprenant la grande cuisine et la cuisine de ménage (The Cookbook Including Grand And Domestic Cooking).
In this book, Gouffé listed twelve mother sauces. (He used both the terms grandes sauces and sauce mères).
The pioneering chef Auguste Escoffier is credited with establishing the importance of Espagnole, Velouté, Béchamel and Tomate, as well as Hollandaise and Mayonnaise. His book Le guide culinaire was published in 1903. It lists numerous "Grandes Sauces de base", including espagnole, velouté, béchamel, and tomate as well as others such as mirepoix and jus de veau lié (thickened veal stock).
The original French editions of Le guide culinaire listed Hollandaise as a daughter sauce rather than a grande sauce. Mayonnaise, in the chapter on cold sauces, was described as a mother sauce for cold sauces, and compared to Espagnole and Velouté. The 1907 English edition removed this description of mayonnaise entirely, replacing it with hollandaise among the basic sauces â the likely origin of the modern five-sauce list.
The 1907 English edition of Le guide culinaire, A Guide to Modern Cookery, listed fewer "basic sauces", including Hollandaise alongside espagnole, "half glaze" (demi glace), velouté, allemande, béchamel, and tomate. The English edition did not describe mayonnaise as a mother sauce, and included the sentence that "Allemande Sauce is not, strictly speaking, a basic sauce".
Béchamel is a milk-based sauce, thickened with a white roux and typically flavoured with onion, nutmeg, or thyme.
Espagnole is a strong-flavoured brown sauce, made from a dark brown roux and brown stockâÂÂusually beef or veal stockâÂÂand tomatoes or tomato paste.
Velouté is light in colour, made by reducing clear stock (made from un-roasted bones), usually veal, chicken or fish stock, thickened with a white or blond roux. Velouté is the French word for "velvety".
The sauce tomate described by Escoffier is a tomato sauce made with fatty salted pork breast, a mirepoix of carrots, onions and thyme, and white stock.
Hollandaise is a warm emulsion based on egg yolk and clarified butter, flavoured with lemon juice or vinegar. In the original 1903 French edition of Le guide culinaire, hollandaise appears on page 150 among the petites sauces (daughter sauces), not among the grandes sauces.
Béarnaise sauce is a derivation of hollandaise.