The 5 French Mother Sauces and What Each One Teaches

The five French mother sauces are béchamel, velouté, espagnole, sauce tomat and hollandaise, set down by Escoffier in the early 1900s. Three of them start from the same roux: equal weights of butter and flour cooked 2 to 3 minutes over medium heat, then whisked into warm liquid. Learn that roux and one egg-yolk emulsion, and you can make most of the classic French sauce book.

The roux carries three of the five.

The five sauces side by side

Béchamel is butter, flour and milk. Cook the roux until it smells faintly nutty and the raw flour smell is gone, then add warm milk gradually while whisking. Cold milk on hot roux makes the starch seize into lumps. Season with salt, white pepper and fresh nutmeg, which is what makes it taste like béchamel and not white gravy. It's ready when it coats a spoon and holds a clean line when you drag a finger through it. Add cheese for Mornay, sweated onion purée for soubise, or use it straight in lasagne and a croque monsieur.

Velouté is the same method with white stock instead of milk. It should be pale and glossy, not grey or cloudy, so skim it as it simmers. Finished with cream it becomes suprême: sear a chicken breast, deglaze the pan sauce fond with white wine, add the velouté and reduce for a few minutes.

Espagnole is about color at every stage. Brown the mirepoix hard, cook the tomato paste until it darkens and sticks, then build on a dark roux and brown stock with real gelatin in it. It's rarely served alone. Reduced with more veal stock it becomes demi-glace, the base for bordelaise, sauce Robert and chasseur.

Sauce tomat is tomatoes simmered with aromatics until thick. It's the most familiar of the five and the least technical, which is why it teaches the least.

Hollandaise is egg yolks whisked with a reduction of white wine, vinegar and peppercorns over barely simmering water until they ribbon and roughly triple in volume. Keep the bowl between 60 and 65°C (140 to 149°F) by lifting it off the heat as you go, then drizzle in clarified butter slowly until the emulsion takes, faster after that. Finish with lemon, salt and cayenne. If it breaks, whisk a fresh yolk in a clean bowl and slowly beat the broken sauce into it, the same way you'd rescue a mayonnaise.

Related: The 3 Roux Ratios That Fix Lumpy Sauces Forever

Which mother sauce should you learn first?

Béchamel. It's the simplest roux sauce and every mistake shows. A rushed roux leaves a raw flour taste, cold milk leaves lumps, and over-reducing makes it gluey. Pull it off the heat a little thinner than you want, because it tightens as it sits, and strain it through a fine sieve if anything slipped through. Press plastic wrap onto the surface while it rests so it doesn't form a skin.

Velouté comes next because it's the same technique, and it shows you how much the stock decides the result. A thin, pale stock gives you a thin, pale sauce no matter how good the roux is, which is why homemade bone stock matters more here than anywhere else. Hollandaise is the separate skill, and it's all heat control on egg yolks.

Is espagnole worth making at home?

On the line, espagnole and demi-glace get made in big batches over a day, because every braise and steak sauce leans on them. At home, for one dinner, I'd skip it. A well-reduced pan sauce built on good brown stock gets you most of the way in a fraction of the time.

It's worth doing once if you braise often, since a quart of demi-glace freezes well and turns weeknight pan sauces into something closer to a restaurant plate. If you don't keep brown stock around, start with the other four.

For hollandaise you're holding, keep it covered in a warm water bath, stir it every 20 minutes and use it within about 90 minutes. The USDA treats 40 to 140°F as the danger zone, so a bath that drifts down to lukewarm is a reason to make a fresh batch, not to stretch it.

Related: Hollandaise Without Breaking It: Blender Method

If you're making one of these this week, make béchamel, and make it twice before moving on.