A New Generation of Chefs Redefine the Mother Sauce

For classically trained chefs, the idea of sauce is likely bound to the French mothers (velouté, espagnole, béchamel, hollandaise, sauce tomate) and their derivatives. As a family, they’re an elegant lot, with precisely defined identities. After all, they were codified between the mid-19th and early 20th centuries by Carême and Escoffier, standardizers-in-chief of French gastronomy. But centering one’s understanding of sauces and how they’re built on the traditional...