#7 Sauces: Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making

Sauces: Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making by James Peterson - Buy @ Amazon

Sauces: Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making
by James Peterson (1991)
2nd Edition (1998)

Glace de viande’s target consistency is demonstrated with color photos in both hot and cold forms.

Ratings: Learn more
Quality: 4/5 – Excellent recipes
Importance: 5/5 – Sauce bible
Difficulty: 3/5 – Moderate
Rarity: 2/5 – Cookbook stores

Today’s Cookbook:
Yesterday we learned about foregoing “exact” recipes for the visceral improvisation of ratios, especially with sauces and bread doughs, in cookbook #6 Ratio.

Today we’re going to geek out about categorizing and improvising sauces with James Peterson’s sauce bible- cookbook #7 Sauces: Classical and Comtemporary Sauce Making.

Beyond Mother sauces
The author blows past the French concept of “mother sauces”, including in this 2nd edition such non-European (gasp!) sauces as salsa, Thai chili sauce, and even Indonesian kemiri (candlenut)-thickened sauces. Before we jump off into the world of alternative sauce taxonomies, here’s a refresher on the Mother Sauces of Careme and Escoffier:

Making a gastric properly requires vigorously caramelizing sugar. This and other tricky parts of the recipe are illustrated with gorgeous color photos.

Classic Mother Sauces, their bases and thickeners:

• Hollandaise/Bearnaise: Egg Yolk, emulsified with hot oil
• Mayonnaise: Egg yolk, emulsified with cold oil
• Bechamel: Scalded milk/cream, roux-thickened
• Espagnole: Browned beef, roux-thickened
• Veloute: Boiled chicken/veal/fish, roux-thickened
• Tomato: Stewed tomatoes, roux-thickened

The cookbook offers several other categories for sauces:

• Liaisons: Thickeners like gelatin, starches, egg yolks, cream, butter, giblets, bread, wine lees, yogurt, and seafood coral (roe).
• Integral Sauces: No stock, just the juices of the cooked protein.
• Non-Integral Sauces: Stock-based, made separately from cooked protein.
• Crustacean sauces: Thickened and flavored with shells and coral (roe).
• Jellied sauces: Classical chaud-froid, meat and fish jellies.
• Butter sauces: Compound butters, beurre blanc, and broken butter sauces.
• Puree-thickened sauces: Raw or cooked nuts, vegetables and fruits.
• Salad sauces: Vinaigrettes, dressings, salsas, relishes, pesto.
• Pasta sauces: Regional Italian specialties for seafood, vegetable, meat and tomato dishes.
• Asian sauces: Japanese broths and dressings, Southeast Asian and Chinese condiments, Indian spice powders and curries.
• Dessert sauces: Anglaise, sabayon, cream, chocolate, caramel and other sweet sauces.

Using a stand mixer to infuse lobster shells into butter, color photos are used to indicate desired chunk size and consistency.

Attempting Asian Sauces
I think Peterson could have done a bit more research on the Asian sauces section. All of the Japanese sauce recipes and techniques are cribbed from cookbook #1 Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art, including a dashi recipe straight lifted from that Japanese culinary bible. The author even goes so far as to recommend instant dashi for chef use- because it’s not as poorly made as the West’s bouillon cubes!

Lack of historical context in a larger body of common ethnic recipes makes the Asiatic section of this cookbook a confusing one. Allow me to illustrate with this list of “ingredients for stir-fry” sauce, which might be more accurately listed as:

Thickeners and flavorings for Chinese stir-fry sauce:

• Chilis: Add spiciness through chili pastes, whole peppers, ground peppercorns
• Black beans: Fermented, crushed- adds salty flavor
• Ham: Thinly sliced, add saltiness near end of cooking
• Hoisin sauce: Sweet anise-scented soy bean sauce, adds sweetness
• Orange peel: Dried slivers, adds aroma to sesame oil and chilis
• Oyster sauce: Adds seafood flavor, used with sesame oil
• Peanuts/Other Nuts: Add nutty flavor + texture, fried and paired with sesame oil and garlic.
• Sesame oil: Adds an intense, savory flavor.
• Honey/Sugar: Add sweetness to vegetables and meats during stir-frying.
• Vinegars: Combine with sugar for sweet and sour sauces.

The author made a commendable pass at including Asian sauces. We must still rely on region-speific cookbooks with their ethnic contexts to even begin to master authentic Asian sauces.

Thickening chart for professional cooks, showing proportions of liaison to incorporate or process to achieve the desired thickness.

Conclusion: Essential sauce reference
This is really the ultimate sauce bible. Especially if you are a professional cook and need a solid, dependable recipe for a sauce you’ve never even heard of- this is the book you need.

I felt like this book really encouraged me to improvise with sauces. Much like yesterday’s cookbook #6 Ratio, there is a ton of fundamental sauce knowledge. There are cool tricks like making a compound chlorophyll butter for changing the color of a hot sauce via au beurre, and great visual references such as the thickening consistencies of sauce liaisons chart.

The numerous PERFECT recipes for how to execute Western sauces more than make up for omitting complex starches like methylcelluloses or gellans, and a frankly rudimentary pass at Asian sauces. I think that’s the most vexing thing about Peterson’s impressive effort at forging a sauce reference that attempts to re-enshrine and evolve the classics: it’s still classically myopic.

Dried Mushroom Sauce Recipe

This recipe stood out for me since I have a good supply of dried morels, and could make this any time of the year.

Morel Jelly

20 dried morels
2 cups brown meat jelly
splash of port

1. Rinse dried morels in running water. Rest in bowl after splashing port on them. When softened, squeeze gently to remove dirt.
2. Infuse morels in hot brown meat jelly in a small saucepan. After 10 minutes, strain the jelly through cheesecloth.
3. Chop morels and stir into jelly for service.