Basics of sauce making?

Do you want to elaborate some, any sauces in particular?

http://www.amazon.com/Sauces-Classical-Contemporary-Sauce-Making/dp/0470194960

 

that should get you started...

I cannot recommend this enough.

http://www.amazon.com/Sauces-Classical-Contemporary-Sauce-Making/dp/0471292753?tag=duckduckgo-d-20

It's James Peterson.

As a line cook, it made me. It transformed me. I learned to cook from chefs that I worked for, but this book was my basis.

It was my "go to".

Still is. The history of, the achieve of, the mastery... A great author who can turn a verse. And gives the history of.

To a fault. The recipe for bearnaise occupies 4 pages.

If you want the classic way it's Guide Culinaire by A. Escoffier ( crown press)

It starts from the stocks and goes upward into the 5 mothers and onward

Escoffier

is it approchable? is it easy to read? i guess that is what i'm asking.

Originally Posted by left4bread 

Not really.  Not for most people. Furthermore, most of the classic sauces from 100 years ago are outmoded and dated, as are most of the "thickening by starch" techniques.  I still use a lot of that junk, but you probably shouldn't. 

 

If your very serious about developing sauce technique, Larousse or Peterson will serve you best and provide a large compendium of recipes as well.  If all you want are a few basic sauces and enough technique to allow you some improvisation, you're probably better off with a few, good general cookbooks -- or cookbooks oriented towards the cuisine in question -- and asking specific questions on a forum like this one.

 

BDL

Edited by boar_d_laze - 3/21/12 at 9:47am

Larousse is also old shool and  is still good because it starts with the stocks . Some sauce making may seem to  be old  fashioned but todays

cooking is still based on them. I am not talking microwave and good housekeeping using Campbells soups.  Although some prepared cream soups could be classified as Veloute"s

Ed, you're mixing up the Larousse Gastronomique with David Larousse's excellent books on sauces and stocks, especially The Sauce Bible.  They are not the same, and David Larousse is not "old school."  I'm sorry for any confusion my lack of specificity may have engendered.  I suppose I overestimated the general awareness of David Larousse.

 

BDL

Sorry, never heard of him. Have heard of Peterson.

So, lets have two titles with author names that would be good for home cooks aspiring to raise their expertise and dishes? Useful would be some shortcuts that cut down on expensive & labor intensive stocks or other necessary but uncommon ingredients not typically found in a home pantry. An example is pro kitchen Demi Glace the paste type, used for a wide variety of meat sauces. I haven't found anything close to that in my local stores, "Better Than Bouillon" in beef is the only thing that is close, maybe if I could get their Au Jus base that would be close.