What is a Mother Sauce?

Mother knows best, the saying goes, but when it comes to cooking, the best know the mother sauces. In traditional French cuisine, each of the five mother sauces serves as a base for an infinite number of small sauces: the daughters and granddaughters cascading down the family tree from béchamel, velouté, Espagnole, tomato, and Hollandaise sauces. And while the French mother sauces come from the world of fine-dining , the sauces are simple combinations of basic technique and everyday ingredients, easy to execute in the home kitchen by even a novice cook.

Marie-Antoine Carême baked Napoleon’s wedding cake, cooked for British royalty, and prepared feasts for the Tsar. He was, according to some, the world’s first celebrity chef. More important, he wrote books that created the first codified, systemic guides to fine French cooking, which served as road maps for all Western chefs for centuries to come. The centerpiece to his cooking starts with four basic sauces, from which all others begin. (The fifth mother sauce, Hollandaise, joined the group later.)

For home cooks who want to create the flavors and dishes they taste in restaurants, learning the five mother sauces is the first step into a world of flavor: having these bases lets you swap additional ingredients in and out to turn them into other traditional sauces (Béarnaise and Dijon from Hollandaise or suprême from velouté) but also use them to easily create your own deep, rich, unique sauces, fancy enough to top your turkey at Thanksgiving or prime rib at Christmas, but also easy enough to turn Thursday’s spaghetti into a dinner-party-worthy dish.

Mother sauces—or their daughters—may even already be a part of your cooking repertoire: béchamel for lasagna, tomato for your pasta sauce, or Hollandaise for your eggs Benedict. And if they’re not, they will be soon. All your standard dishes, from mac and cheese to steak, are about to improve exponentially, without too much extra effort on your part—just a few whisks of butter and flour.