A History of Sauces

A History of Sauces

 In leading Paris restaurants the saucier is second in rank only to the head chef. The saucier, prepares sauces and often all stuffings, on his skill alone depends the success of many of the most elaborate dishes in French cuisine. Sauces and stuffings have much in common. Stuffing’s are very much under appreciated by the average cook they, like sauces, give additional flavour and body to dishes; they enhance or glamorize what might otherwise be rather plain fare; and, in terms of preparation, both must be well seasoned and perfectly blended so that the flavours melt together.

            The word “sauce” is a French word that means a relish to make our food more appetizing. Sauces are liquid or semi-liquid foods devised to extend foods, make them look, smell and taste better and hence be more easily digested, more beneficial. 

            Because of the lack of refrigeration in the early days of cooking, meat poultry, fish, and seafood didn’t last long. Sauces and gravies were used to mask the flavour of tainted foods.

200 A. D. – The Romans used sauces todisguise the taste of the food, and to conceal doubtful freshness. According to the articleFood & Cooking in Roman Britain By Marian Woodman:

          “The main course or primae mensai varied both in the number and elaboration of dishes. Roast and boiled meat, poultry, and game or other meat delicacies would be served. No dish was complete without highly flavoured and seasoned sauce.” Contrary to present Canadian preference, “the main object seemed to be to disguise the natural taste of food- possibly to conceal doubtful freshness, possibly to demonstrate the variety of costly spices available to the host” (this practice still exists in the United States today as is evidenced by some of the barbecue and chicken recipes). Some times so many ingredients were used in a sauce it was impossible to single out one flavour. One Roman cook bitterly complained that some of his fellow cooks’” When they season their dinners they don’t use condiments for seasoning but screech owls, which eat out the intestines of the guest alive”. Apicius wrote at the end of one of his recipes for a particularly flavoursome sauce, “No one at table will know what he is eating”. These sauces were usually thickened with wheat flour or crumbled pastry. Honey was often incorporated into a “sweet and sour” dish or sauce.

          Highly flavoured sauces often containing as many as a dozen ingredients were extensively used to mask the natural flavours of ‘Roman food. The most commonly used seasoning was liquamen, the nearest equivalent today being a very strong fish stock, with anchovies as its main ingredient (this was, and still is today, the main purpose of incorporating anchovies in to any dish). This was so popular that it was factory –produced in many towns of the Roman Empire.