French sauces are renowned in the culinary world. These five sauces, including Hollandaise, Bechamel, Velvet, Brown Sauce, and Tomato Sauce, can be combined with other ingredients or seasonings to create a wide variety of flavors.

Hollandaise Sauce

Hollandaise sauce is a pale yellow sauce made primarily with egg yolks, cream, and lemon juice. It’s the only one of the five French sauces that doesn’t require a batter.

The egg yolks and cream help thicken the sauce, giving it a richer flavor. Besides being a popular addition to Eggs Benedict, Hollandaise sauce is also a great accompaniment to vegetables like asparagus, as well as chicken, ham, and fish dishes.

Béchamel Sauce

Formally known as Béchamel Sauce, Béchamel Sauce is made primarily from butter, flour, and milk. While it can be a bit bland on its own, it’s a great base.

Béchamel Sauce can be created by adding ingredients like onions, garlic, salt, and black pepper to create a variety of sauces. Béchamel Sauce also works well with cheese. Mornay Sauce is a type of sauce that’s made by simmering hard cheese in béchamel sauce.

Béchamel Sauce, like other béchamel-based sauces, is a great accompaniment to pasta, gratins, stews, croquettes, and more.

Velouté Sauce

Like béchamel sauce, Velouté Sauce is a white sauce, but technically, velouté sauce is more beige in color.

While espagnole sauce, like béchamel sauce, requires butter and flour, it doesn’t require milk. Instead, it uses chicken or fish stock. Therefore, espagnole sauce and its derivatives are ideal accompaniments to chicken and seafood dishes.

Brown Sauce

Espagnole sauce, formally known as Espagnole Sauce, is a dark brown sauce made primarily from beef (or beef stock), tomato puree, onions, carrots, and a brown roux to thicken it.

Because of its stronger flavor, brown sauce is rarely used on its own. Instead, it’s often used as a base sauce for other sauces. For example, the famous French dish, Beef Stew, uses Bourguignon, which is based on brown sauce, red wine, and onions.

Tomato Sauce

The versatile French sauce Tomat is one of the five great French sauces. While the most traditional French tomato sauce recipe requires many ingredients and takes a considerable amount of time to prepare, here’s a relatively simple recipe.

Ingredients:

• 1 unit of French dressing vegetables (diced) (the dressing vegetables ratio is 2 onions: 1 carrot: 1 celery)
• 4 units of canned tomatoes (e.g., 200g of dressing vegetables for 800g of canned tomatoes)
• Garlic cloves (chopped) to taste
• A pinch of olive oil
• A pinch of salt and black pepper
• A pinch of sugar

Instructions:

• Place the French dressing vegetables in a saucepan with a little olive oil and heat over medium heat.
• Wait until the French dressing vegetables begin to release their fragrance (approximately 5-10 minutes), then add the tomatoes and garlic cloves and continue simmering for 1.5-2 hours.
• Add salt, black pepper, and sugar to the tomato paste and mix well.
• If you want a smoother texture, you can use a food processor or other suitable tool. You can also sieve the tomato paste to make it smoother.