Julia Child once said that “Sauces are the splendor and glory of French cooking.” In culinary arts there are the basic five mother sauces, including; béchamel, veloute, espagnloe, hollandaise, and tomato. These mother sauces are used to make up other small sauces. The French mother sauces were originally four base sauces set forward by Antonin Careme in the 19th century. Careme’s four original mother sauces were Allemande, Bechamel, Veloute and Espagnole. A carefully constructed French sauce is usually developed in several stages and requires attention at each stage to balance all of the components. Some French sauces function to contrast while others help to extend or amplify intrinsic flavors. Throughout the history of cuisine; sauces have been used as a basis for many regional styles of cuisine. A sauce is defined as a liquid or semi-solid food served on or in the process of preparing other foods. Sauces are created to accompany other foods and make them look, smell, and taste better. They are easily digested and nutritionally beneficial. Sauces are not served by themselves; they add flavor, moisture, aromas, and visual appeals to a finished dish.
Today there are many different compound or small sauces that can be seen worldwide, however these small sauces are linked to and are derived from the five classified mother sauces. Two French chefs that contributed to the creation of these fundamental sauces are, Marie-Antoine Crème; who was responsible for classifying the sauces into recognizable procedures, and Aguste Escoffier who refined the classified sauces into “Families” that are still recognized today. The reason mother sauces have stood the test of time is that they are incredibly versatile and provide the basic foundation on which you can build dozens of other sauces.Sauces
Careme was known as the king of cooks and the cook of kings. This is because famous French diplomats, and royalty such as, Prince de Talleyrand, King George the IV & Tsar Alexander of Russia. He worked his way up from a middle class cook to a well known respected chef. Careme was a master of French, Grande cuisine which was regional to his home in Paris. He was one of the first chefs to create dishes that used architecture in his presentation to visually please the eye.
He was known to be the first chef to standardize the use of a roux for a thickening agent in the sauces. Careme was responsible for creating a system that classified four of the five mother sauces. These include: Allemande- stock with egg yolk & lemon juice, Béchamel- flour and milk, Espagnole, brown stock; and Veloute white stock. These four foundation sauces were called grandes sauces. Two of them have a record of two hundred years behind them prior to Careme; one of which is bechamel. The first mother sauce is béchamel, this is a very basic sauce made with milk, clarified butter, and flour. In which you thicken the milk using the flour and clarified butter to form a roux, then once you have a thick sauce you may season your béchamel with onion, garlic cloves, and nutmeg. This particular sauce is used in other sauces such as, crème, mornay, soubise, nantua, cheddar cheese, mustard sauce, and many more.
Bechamel was named after the French aristocrat Louis de Bechameil, this sauce was first officially published in 1651 by the esteemed chef François Pierre La Varenne. There is debate over whether Bechameil actually invented the sauce or just named after him. It is made with milk, yet the final product is thick and rich and more indicative of heavy cream. Béchamel can be topped over vegetables, fish or poultry. In Italy it is traditionally combined with tomato sauce and drizzled over baked pastas. There is a theory that the famous white sauce was brought to France by the great chefs of Italian born, Queen Catherine de Medici. In Italian experience, all the good food that France has is accredited to her. According to many, she even presented the fork to France. Although its origins may be somewhat cryptic, béchamel is a sauce that was certainly used mostly by royalty as the rest of the common people didn’t get refrigeration for their kitchens and couldn’t afford ice. The second mother sauces is veloute, which the term velouté is from the French adjectival form of velour, meaning velvet. These necessary ingredients are chicken, flour, butter, salt and pepper. There are times when chicken is often replaced with other ingredients such as fish or veal stock. This sauce is a stock-based white sauce that can be made from chicken, veal, or fish stock thickened with white roux. Veloute is made by thickening a white stock with roux and letting it simmer. Adding different things to veloute can help to generate other sauces. Such as, chicken valoute equipped with cream then becomes supreme sauce, veal veloute thickened with a liaison of egg yolks and cream becomes allemende sauce, and fish veloute with white wine and heavy cream is then white wine sauce. Even still, some small sauces prepared using veloute are as followed, normandy, bercy, hungarian, mushroom, poulette, and aurora sauce. Sauce Allemande is popular sauce in French cuisine. It is thickened with heavy cream, egg yolks, and seasoned with a few drops of lemon juice. The sauce aurora is simple to make, requiring just the addition of tomato puree. Sauce Andalouse is a spicier white sauce with red peppers and lots of garlic thrown in. The sauce Hungarian just needs a bit of white wine, paprika, and vinegar added to the mother sauce. Sauce Poulette is a slightly tangy sauce that uses mushrooms, lemon juice and parsley. The Venetian sauce is created by adding tarragon, chervil, and shallots. The Normandy and supreme sauces are a bit more difficult, however. A sauce Normandy is made by first creating a velouté flavored with fish stock. Then mushroom cooking liquid and oyster liquid are added. This sauce is finished with a liaison of cream and egg yolks. The supreme sauce begins with a chicken velouté and requires the addition of a reduction of mushroom liquid and cream. Velouté sauces are appropriate for vegetable, fish, veal, or chicken dishes. If an individual can perfect making it, an entire array of French culinary opportunities will open up to him. This mother sauce enables cooks to produce many well-known dishes with easy adaptations. The origin of this sauce was first recognized in the nineteenth century by Antonin Careme, once again in his culinary book “The Art Of French Cooking.” Veloute was termed as the first classified mother sauce. The sauce itself seems to pre-date Carême, and a version of it was included in François Pierre de la Varenne’s extraordinarily influential book, The French Cook in 1651. La Varenne introduced many firsts to French cuisine, including using a roux, rather than bread crumbs, to thicken sauces. In addition to collecting and publishing numerous sauce recipes, he is credited with inventing dozens of sauces on his own. Whether or not La Varenne invented Velouté, re-imagined it with roux as the thickener, or classified several sauces under the name I have not yet discovered.

Citations:
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"BÃCHEMEL SAUCE RECIPE." BÃchamel (Bechamel) Sauce Info & Recipe. Web. 28 Sept. 2015.
Ellis-Christensen, Tricia, and Bronwyn Harris. WiseGeek. Conjecture. Web. 28 Sept. 2015
"The Five French Mother Sauces: The Mother Of All Resources | Stella Culinary." The Five French Mother Sauces: The Mother Of All Resources | Stella Culinary. Web. 28 Sept. 2015.
"Veloute Sauce." IFood.tv. Web. 29 Sept. 2015.