Sauce

Sauce is a liquid, semi-liquid, or creamy preparation served with or used in cooking to add flavor, moisture, visual appeal, and texture to a dish. Sauces are one of the pillars of culinary art, transforming simple ingredients into complex, satisfying meals. French cuisine recognizes five “mother sauces” — béchamel, velouté, espagnole, hollandaise, and tomato — from which hundreds of variations are derived.

Beyond the French tradition, every cuisine has its own iconic sauces: Italian pesto and marinara, Asian soy and teriyaki, Mexican salsa, Indian curry sauces, and Middle Eastern tahini. Sauces can be thickened with flour, starch, eggs, cream, or reduction, and flavored with herbs, spices, wine, vinegar, or citrus. In the food industry, sauces are produced as both ready-to-use retail products and semi-finished ingredients for foodservice and manufacturing.

Discover more about sauces — from classic recipes and mother sauce techniques to modern variations and industrial production — in the articles below.