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For other uses, see Sauce (disambiguation).
Samosas accompanied by four sauces
A chef whisking a sauce

In cooking, a sauce is liquid, cream or semi-solid food served on or used in preparing other foods. Sauces are not normally consumed by themselves; they add flavor, moisture, and visual appeal to another dish. Sauce is a French word taken from the Latin salsa,[1] meaning salted. Possibly the oldest sauce recorded is garum, the fish sauce used by the Ancient Greeks.

Sauces need a liquid component, but some sauces (for example, pico de gallo salsa or chutney) may contain more solid elements than liquid. Sauces are an essential element in cuisines all over the world.

Sauces may be used for savory dishes or for desserts. They can be prepared and served cold, like mayonnaise, prepared cold but served lukewarm like pesto, or can be cooked like bechamel and served warm or again cooked and served cold like apple sauce. Some sauces are industrial inventions like Worcestershire sauce, HP Sauce, or nowadays mostly bought ready-made like soy sauce or ketchup, others still are freshly prepared by the cook. Sauces for salad are called salad dressing. Sauces made by deglazing a pan are called pan sauces.

A cook who specializes in making sauces is called a saucier.


French cuisine[edit]


In the early 19th century, the chef Marie-Antoine Carême created an extensive list of sauces, many of which were original recipes. It is unknown how many sauces Carême is responsible for, but it is estimated to be in the hundreds. The cream sauce, in its most popular form around the world, was concurrently created by another chef, Dennis Leblanc, working in the same kitchen as Carême. He considered the four grande sauces to be espagnole, velouté, allemande, and béchamel, from which a large variety of petites sauces could be composed.[2]

In the early 20th century, the chef Auguste Escoffier refined Carême's list of basic sauces in the four editions of his classic Le Guide Culinaire[3] and its abridged English translation A Guide to Modern Cookery.[4] He dropped allemande as he considered it a variation of velouté,[4] and added hollandaise and sauce tomate, defining the five fundamental "mother sauces" still used today:

A sauce which is derived from one of the mother sauces by augmenting with additional ingredients is sometimes called a "daughter sauce" or "secondary sauce."[5] Most sauces commonly used in classical cuisine are daughter sauces. For example, Béchamel can be made into Mornay by the addition of grated cheese, and Espagnole becomes Bordelaise with the addition of reduction of red wine, shallots, and poached beef marrow.

In the mid-20th century, a specialized implement, the French sauce spoon, was introduced to aid in eating sauce in French cuisine and now enjoys some popularity at high-end restaurants.

In the European traditions, sauces are often served in a sauce boat.

Italian cuisine[edit]


Savory sauces used for dressing meats, fish and vegetables[edit]

Examples are:

Savory sauces used to dress pasta dishes[edit]


Dessert sauces[edit]

Asian cuisines[edit]

Sauce being brushed on satay in the hawker food court at in Tanjung Aru beach, Sabah, Borneo, Malaysia.

Latino and Spanish American cuisines[edit]

  • Salsas ("sauces" in Spanish) such as pico de gallo (salsa tricolor), salsa cocida, salsa verde, chile, and salsa roja are a crucial part of many Latino and Spanish-American cuisines in the Americas. Typical ingredients include tomato, onion, and spices; thicker sauces often contain avocado. Mexican cuisine features sauces which may contain chocolate, seeds, and chiles collectively known by the Nahua name mole (compare guacamole). Argentine cooking uses more Italian-derived sauces, such as tomato sauce, cream sauce, or pink sauce (the two mixed).
  • Peruvian cuisine uses sauces based mostly in different varieties of ají combined with several ingredients most notably salsa huancaína based on fresh cheese and salsa de ocopa based on peanuts or nuts.

British cuisine[edit]

In traditional British cuisine, Gravy is a sauce used on roast dinner, which traditionally comprises roast potatoes, roast meat, boiled, steamed or roasted vegetables and, optionally, Yorkshire pudding, which are usually only eaten with beef. The sole survivor of the medieval bread-thickened sauces, bread sauce is one of the oldest sauces in British cooking, flavored with spices brought in during the first returns of the spice missions across the globe and thickened with dried bread. Apple sauce, mint sauce and horseradish sauce are also used on meat (pork, lamb and beef respectively). Salad cream is sometimes used on salads. Ketchup (referred to colloquially as 'tomato sauce' or 'red sauce') and brown sauce are used on fast-food type dishes. Strong English mustard (as well as French or American mustard) are also used on various foods, as is Worcestershire sauce. Custard is a popular dessert sauce. Some of these sauce traditions have been exported to former colonies such as the USA. Other popular sauces include mushroom sauce, marie rose sauce (as used in a prawn cocktail), whiskey sauce (for serving with Haggis) and cheddar sauce (as used in cauliflower or macaroni and cheese). In contemporary British cuisine, owing to the wide diversity of British society today, there are also many sauces that are of British origin but based upon the cuisine of other countries, particularly former colonies such as India.

Sauce variations[edit]

Caramel sauce

There are also many sauces based on tomato (such as tomato ketchup and tomato sauce), other vegetables and various spices. Although the word 'ketchup' by itself usually refers to tomato ketchup, it may also be used to describe sauces from other vegetables or fruits.

A sauce can also be sweet, and used either hot or cold to accompany and garnish a dessert.

Another kind of sauce is made from stewed fruit, usually strained to remove skin and fibers and often sweetened. Such sauces, including apple sauce and cranberry sauce, are often eaten with specific other foods (apple sauce with pork, ham, or potato pancakes; cranberry sauce with poultry) or served as desserts.

Examples of sauces[edit]

Main article: List of sauces

See also[edit]



  1. ^ "sauce", Wiktionary
  2. ^ Carême, Marie Antonin (1854). L'art de la cuisine française au dix-neuvième siècle (in French) 3. Paris: Au Depot de librairie. p. 1. Retrieved 7 December 2013. 
  4. ^ a b Escoffier, Auguste (1907). A Guide to Modern Cookery. London: William Heinemann. pp. 2,15. Retrieved 7 December 2013. 
  5. ^ Small sauce, definition


Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]