mother sauce

Definition

One of the five foundational French sauces (béchamel, velouté, espagnole, hollandaise, and tomato) from which countless derivative sauces spawn. The OG sauces that all other sauces bow down to.

Example Usage

Once you master the mother sauces, you can create hundreds of variations without breaking a sweat.

Origin

Codified by Auguste Escoffier in the early 20th century

Fun Fact

Escoffier reduced Carême's original list of four mother sauces to five, controversially giving tomato sauce the promotion it deserved.

Source: Escoffier's Le Guide Culinaire (1903)

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