Sauce RecipesLes Sauces

In a small bowl or a screw-top jar, whisk or shake the mustard with the vinegar and a good pinch of salt until the salt has dissolved and the mustard has loosened into the vinegar.

Add the oil in a thin, steady stream while whisking hard, or simply screw the lid on the jar and shake it vigorously for ten seconds. The mustard's lecithin holds the two liquids together as tiny droplets, so the mixture turns cloudy and slightly thick.

Taste on a leaf, not off a spoon — dressing tastes very different once it coats something. Adjust salt, then adjust the balance: more vinegar for sharpness, more oil to soften it. Stir in the shallot if using.

Beat the soft butter against the side of the bowl with a wooden spoon until it is smooth and slightly pale — this is doing by hand what a paddle attachment does in a machine, and it works just as well with a little patience.

Beat in the parsley, lemon zest, lemon juice, a good pinch of salt and the pepper until evenly distributed.

Turn the butter out onto a sheet of greaseproof paper, shape it roughly into a log with a spoon, then roll the paper around it and twist the ends like a sweet wrapper to tighten it into a neat cylinder.

Chill until firm, at least an hour. Slice into coins to serve.

Melt the butter in a light-coloured saucepan over medium heat — a pale pan lets you see the colour change; a dark one hides it until too late.

It will foam as the water in the butter boils off. Swirl the pan gently and keep watching through the foam.

As the foam subsides, the milk solids at the bottom turn from white to gold to a deep hazelnut brown, and the smell turns nutty and toasted. This happens fast in the last thirty seconds.

Off the heat, immediately add the lemon juice or vinegar — it will hiss and the butter stops cooking at once, arresting it at exactly the colour you want. Pour straight over the dish.

Set the mixing bowl on a damp cloth to anchor it. Whisk the yolk, mustard, half the vinegar and a pinch of salt together for thirty seconds until it lightens slightly in colour — this is the base the emulsion will form around.

Begin adding the oil, drop by drop from a teaspoon, whisking constantly and vigorously. Do not rush this first stage: the emulsion is at its most fragile until roughly a third of the oil is in.

Once it is thick and holding, switch to pouring the oil in a thin, steady thread rather than drops, whisking throughout. If it ever looks like it is thinning or the oil is pooling on top, stop pouring and whisk hard until it re-thickens before adding more.

When all the oil is worked in, whisk in the remaining vinegar and a squeeze of lemon juice to taste, and check the salt.

Chop the garlic coarsely, add a pinch of coarse salt, and work the flat of the knife back and forth across the pile at a shallow angle until it becomes a smooth paste — see Knife Skills for the method.

Whisk the garlic paste into the egg yolk in a bowl set on a damp cloth.

Add the oil exactly as for mayonnaise: drop by drop at first, whisking constantly, then in a thin thread once the emulsion has taken hold.

Finish with the lemon juice and taste for salt — the garlic will have brought some sharpness already.

If using the onion and bay, warm the milk in a saucepan with them over low heat for ten minutes without boiling, then strain and discard them, keeping the milk warm.

Melt the butter in a clean saucepan over low heat. Stir in the flour with a wooden spoon and cook, stirring constantly, for two minutes — no longer. It should smell of pastry, not of raw flour, and stay pale, barely past foaming. See Figure 1 above.

Off the heat, add the warm milk gradually — a ladle at a time — whisking hard after each addition until fully smooth before adding the next. This prevents lumps far more reliably than adding it all at once.

Return to low heat and cook, stirring constantly with the wooden spoon and scraping the base and corners of the pan, for eight to ten minutes, until it coats the back of the spoon thickly — see the nappe test below.

Season with salt, white pepper and a little nutmeg. Press a piece of buttered paper directly onto the surface if not using at once, to stop a skin forming.

Melt the butter over low heat, stir in the flour, and cook for three minutes, stirring, until it turns a shade past pale — the very palest gold, blond rather than white.

Off the heat, whisk in the hot stock gradually, a ladle at a time, beating out lumps before each addition.

Return to low heat and simmer gently for fifteen to twenty minutes, skimming any froth from the surface with a large spoon and stirring often, until reduced by roughly a fifth and coating the spoon in a full nappe.

Season with salt, pepper and, for a fish or chicken velouté, a squeeze of lemon.

Warm the oil or butter in a heavy pan over low-medium heat. Add the onion and carrot with a pinch of salt and cook gently, stirring, for eight to ten minutes until soft and translucent but not coloured.

Add the garlic and cook thirty seconds, until fragrant — no longer, or it turns bitter.

Add the tomatoes, bay and thyme. If using tinned, crush the whole tomatoes against the side of the pan with the wooden spoon. Bring to a gentle simmer.

Simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally, for 35–45 minutes, until the sauce has visibly reduced and thickened and the oil separates slightly at the edges.

Remove the bay and thyme stalk. Push the sauce through a sieve set over a bowl, working it with the back of the wooden spoon to extract everything but the skins and seeds. Return to the pan, taste, and adjust salt, pepper, and sugar.

In the same heavy pan the meat was sautéed and removed from, add the butter and mushrooms over fairly high heat. Cook without stirring for the first minute so they take colour, then toss and continue until browned all over — mushrooms release water first and only brown once it has cooked away.

Add the shallots and cook two minutes until softened.

Pour in the wine and scrape up every brown deposit on the base of the pan with the wooden spoon — this is the fond, and it is most of the sauce's flavour. Simmer until reduced by half.

Add the stock and sauce tomate. Simmer eight to ten minutes until it coats the spoon lightly. Stir in the tarragon and parsley off the heat, and check the seasoning.

Put the shallots, vinegar and wine in a saucepan and simmer over medium heat until reduced to a wet, syrupy spoonful — about 2 tablespoons of liquid clinging to the shallots. Watch it in the last minute; it goes from wet to dry very quickly and must not catch.

If using cream, stir it in now and let it come back to a bare simmer; it widens the temperature window for the next step and makes the sauce noticeably harder to break.

Reduce the heat to its lowest setting, or take the pan off the heat entirely and work over residual warmth. Add the cold butter two or three cubes at a time, whisking constantly and briskly until each addition melts into a creamy, opaque sauce before adding the next.

Keep the pan moving on and off the heat as needed — if it looks like it is starting to look oily or thin, it is overheating and separating; take it fully off the heat and whisk hard, adding a cube of cold butter to bring the temperature down.

Season with salt and white pepper. Do not strain — the shallot is meant to remain, soft and barely visible, through the sauce.

Set a heatproof mixing bowl over a saucepan of barely simmering water — the base of the bowl should not touch the water. This improvised bain-marie is the whole safety margin of the recipe: it means the eggs can never see direct, fierce heat.

Whisk the yolks and cold water together in the bowl over the warm water, briskly and continuously, for three to five minutes, until the mixture triples in volume, turns pale and foamy, and leaves a ribbon trail when the whisk is lifted.

Take the bowl off the heat. Add the warm melted butter in a very thin, slow stream, whisking constantly, exactly as for mayonnaise — the emulsion is fragile until roughly a third of the butter is in.

Whisk in the lemon juice, salt and cayenne. If it is too thick, loosen with a teaspoon of warm water.

Put the vinegar, shallots and tarragon stalks in a small saucepan and simmer until reduced to about a tablespoon of thick, syrupy liquid. Strain, pressing the solids to extract every drop, and let the reduction cool slightly.

Whisk the reduction with the egg yolks in a heatproof bowl set over barely-simmering water, exactly as for hollandaise, until pale, foamy and tripled in volume.

Off the heat, whisk in the warm butter in a slow, thin stream until fully emulsified.

Stir in the chopped tarragon, chervil if using, salt and cayenne.

Lift the cooked meat onto a warm plate to rest. Pour off all but a thin film of fat from the pan, leaving the dark, sticky fond stuck to the base — that fond is the entire flavour of the sauce.

Set the pan over medium-high heat on the hob and pour in the wine or stock. It will bubble hard and steam; scrape the base firmly with the wooden spoon to lift every scrap of fond into the liquid. This is deglazing.

Let it bubble down by about half, then add the remaining stock and any juices that have collected under the resting meat. Simmer briskly for three to five minutes until it coats the spoon lightly.

Strain through a sieve into a small saucepan if the fond has any burnt or gritty bits; otherwise leave as is for a rustic sauce. Off the heat, whisk in the cold butter a piece at a time until glossy — this is called monter au beurre, mounting with butter, and it is the same principle as beurre blanc used to finish rather than build a sauce.

Season and pour around, not over, the sliced meat.