A Saucy History

The word sauce is derived form the latin word salus, meaning "salted". This derivation is appropriate. For millennia, salt has been the basic condiment for enhancing or disguising the flavor of many food. Over the centuries, sauces have also been used for these purpose.

Cooks of ancient Rome flavored many dishes with garum, a golden -colored sauce made from fermented fish entrails combined with brine, condiments, water and wine or vinegar. They also used a sauce referred to as a "single" made from oil, wine and brine. When boiled with herbs and saffron, it became a "double" sauce. To this the Byzantines later added pepper, cloves, cinnamon, cardamon and coriander or spikenard (a fragrant ointment made from grains).

During the Middle Ages, chefs (and their employees) were fond of either very spicy or sweet-and -sour sauces. A typical sauce for roasted meat consisted of powdered cinnamon, mustard, red wine and sweetener such as honey. It was thickened, if at all, with bits of stale or grilled bread. Other sauces were based on veerjuice, an acidic stock prepared from the juice of unripe grapes. To it were added other fruit juices, honey, flower petals and herbs or spices. Indeed, most medieval sauces were heavily spiced. Perhaps this was done to hide the taste of salt -cured or less-than-fresh meats. More likely, however, these sauces were served to showcase the host's wealth.

Guillaume Tirel (c. 1312-1395), who called minself Taillevent, was the master chef for charles V of France. Around 1375 Tailevent wrote Le Viandier, the oldest-known french cookbook. The cooking style he describes relies heavily on pounding, pureeing and spicing most foods so that the finished dish bears little resemblance in shape, texture or flavor to the ingredients. Included in his methods are 17 sauces. Among them is a recipe for a cameline sauce. It is made from grilled bread soaked in wine; the wine-soaked bread is then drained, squeezed-dried and ground with cinnamon, ginger, pepper, cloves and nutmeg; this mixture is then diluted with vinegar. There is also a recipe for a sauce called taillemaslee,made of fried onions, verjuice, vinegar and mustard. (Appropriately, on his grave marker, Taillevent is dressed as a sergeant-at-arms whose shield is decorated with three cooking pots.)

Recipes for some sauces of the Renaissance, such as poivrade or Robert, are recognizable today. Most sauces enjoyed in Renaissance-era Italy and France consisted of some combination of concentrated cooking juices, wines, herbs and spices (especially pepper), sometimes thickened with bread. Sweet, fruit-base sauces were also popular. Most important for the development of modern cuisine, however, was the growing use of sauces based on broths thickened with cream, butter and egg yolks and flavored with herbs and spices.

Although he died in relative obscurity, many now consider Francois Pierre de La Varenne (1618-1678) to be the founding father of French cuisine. His treaties, especially La Cuisinier francais (1651), detail the early development, methods and manners of French cuisine. His analysis and recipes mark a departure from Medieval cookery and a French cuisine heavily influenced by Italian traditions. His writings were uniquely modern in that he included recipes for new foods (especially fruits and vegetables native to the Americas or the far east) and for indigenous foods (such as saltwater fish) that were gradually becoming more popular. La Varenne is credited with introducing roux as a thickening agent for sauces, especially veloute sauces. He emphasized the importance of properly prepared fonds and the reduction of cooking juices to concentrate flavors. He also popularized the use of bouquets garni to flavor stocks and sauces.

Sometime during the early 18th century, the chef to the french Duc de Levis-Mirepoix pioneered the use of onions, celery and carrots to enhance the flavor and aroma of stocks. The mixture, named for the chef's employer, soon became the standard way of enriching stocks. An enriched stock greatly improves the quality of the sauces derived from it.

During the early 19th century, Antonin Careme developed the modern system for classifying hundreds of sauces. It is unknown how many sauces Careme actually invented himself, but he wrote treatises containing the theories and recipes for many of the sauces still used today. Caremen's extravagant list of sauces were reduced and simplified by chefs later in the 19th century, most notably by Auguste Escoffier.