This blueberry sauce recipe from pastry chef Emily Luchetti comes together in a jiffy and only calls for a handful of ingredients. Make a batch to spoon over pancakes, waffles, or a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Use fresh or frozen blueberries to enjoy the sweet-tart taste of summer all year long.

Blueberry Sauce

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This rhubarb red onion chutney recipe comes from Anna Lise Kvan, of Paris’s Holy Belly Café. She rightly calls it a labor of love since it requires patience and a little elbow grease—it’s important to keep stirring to make sure the rhubarb and onions caramelize without sticking. Make a big batch, so you can keep it in the fridge for up to two weeks. She suggests pairing the chutney with roasted pork cutlets or tenderloin, or spreading it on turkey, chicken, or ham sandwiches. We also like adding it to grilled cheeses and charcuterie boards.

Featured in “How to Cook With Rhubarb (Beyond Turning it Into Pie)”

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This strawberries with wine recipe from chef José Andrés makes the perfect end to an evening of grilling. Red wine is reduced with spices and bright citrus zest, then drizzled over fresh strawberries, ice cream, and grilled bread to make this simple, delicious dessert.

Featured in, “Menu: Chef José Andrés’ Fourth of July.”

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This bright and cooling herbal chutney is used as a refreshing accompaniment to rich fried snacks in India, Pakistan, and elsewhere in South Asia. If you prefer a bit more heat, feel free to double up on the chile; for a milder flavor, omit it entirely. The proportions in this mint chutney recipe work best with a looser, non-strained yogurt. If you are using the strained Greek-style, you may thin the sauce with a bit more water.

This recipe ran alongside Margo True’s 2005 article, “Super Snack.”

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In Italian, sbaglione means “big mistake.” This happy accident may have been “mistakenly” invented in Florence—though it is usually made with marsala, the famous Sicilian fortified wine. The recipe eventually migrated to France, where it is known as “sabayon,” and is typically made using the local white wines. Feel free to swap out the Marsala in this formula as you like—writer Tammie Teclemariam suggests “fortifying” any non-fortified wines with a splash of Grand Marnier or brandy—or else replace the booze entirely with a few shots of espresso.

Serve the fragrant, frothy custard like a pudding in pretty glass bowls, use it as a sauce alongside cookies or fresh fruit, or incorporate it into a more elaborate dessert, such as a towering pavlova.

Featured in “Flavorful and Versatile, Zabaglione Is a Festive Way to Cap Off the Meal.”

Zabaglione Pavlova with Pineapple and Black Pepper

Get the recipe >

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This rich peanut sauce from chef, cookbook author, and satay expert Vanja Van der Leeden ticks all the boxes. It’s creamy, nutty, spicy and aromatic. Traditionally made in a heavy mortar and pestle, Van der Leeden’s version can be made quickly and easily in a blender. Unable to eat peanuts? Try swapping them out for almonds or cashews.

This recipe is adapted from Van der Leeden’s cookbook INDOSTOK.

Featured in:  “Making Indonesia-Style Satay Is All About Finding Your Grill Groove.”

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The combination of nutty tempeh and aromatic lemon basil is an elegant match in this fiery Indonesian condiment adapted from chef Vanja Van der Leeden’s cookbook INDOSTOK.  Quite different from more common, saucy sambals, this dryer style goes well with grilled eggplant, rice, and steamed fish. Fresh or frozen makrut limes can be found at Asian grocery stores; if unavailable, substitute the zest of half a lime and a squeeze of fresh lime juice.

Featured in:  “Making Indonesia-Style Satay Is All About Finding Your Grill Groove.”

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“I tried to dive into the pan, headfirst, to taste it with my finger,” says chef Hélène Darroze, recalling the moment when, as a little girl, she was being held by her grandmother, Charlotte, who whisked the Béchamel on the stove with her free arm. “I would have walked to Lourdes for the simple pleasure of licking the bottom of the pan or of eating the crust off a gratin made with this simple, creamy sauce.” Darroze started refining her taste in the kitchen of her family’s restaurant in southwestern France, and is now the fourth generation to wear chef’s whites. 

Béchamel is the mother sauce most of us learn first. The French call them les sauces mères—bases that have simmered over centuries, changing in character and execution with the arrival of ingredients—peppers, nutmeg, tomatoes—from neighboring royal courts and global trade routes. The five modern mother sauces were codified in A Guide to Modern Cookery, an abridged 1907 English-language translation of the original Le guide culinaire by Georges Auguste Escoffier, the chef and writer famed for updating his country’s culinary canon. To the original four sauces (Velouté, Béchamel, Allemande, and Espagnole) enshrined by his predecessor, royal chef Marie-Antoine Carême a century earlier, Escoffier added Hollandaise and Sauce Tomate, and reclassified Allemande. (Mayonnaise, one of his essential cold sauces, is now considered the sixth mother.) Once mastered, the secondary sauces (known as “daughters”) are only a few ingredients away, making it possible to execute the entirety of traditional French cooking and access much of the Francophone food diaspora as well. With colonization, the mother sauces made their way into other cuisines, from Viet-French Sốt Mayonnaise to Creole Sauce Piquant in Haiti and New Orleans, underlining the complex influence of an Old World culinary power. 

Until recently, those adhering to the ancient regime rarely acknowledged the cultural significance of “la cuisine grand-mère”—home cooking—or elevated women to the upper echelons of gastronomy. Slowly, that has begun to change. As chef of her eponymous restaurant at The Connaught in London, Darroze is one of only three French women presently awarded three Michelin stars. (The others are Dominique Crenn and Anne-Sophie Pic.) She also has a pair of Basque-influenced restaurants in Paris, and has been inspired to introduce global flavors to her menus by her two adopted daughters, both born in Vietnam. But Darroze continues to honor her grandmother by preparing memorable gratins bubbling with Mornay sauce, a Béchamel daughter enhanced by Brebis, a sheep’s milk cheese from the Pyrénées.   

Along with Darroze’s creamy recipe for her childhood favorite, consider these mother sauces as building blocks for so many dishes we adore, whether drizzled on poached eggs for a showy brunch or baked into humble mac-and-cheese casserole for a summer picnic.

Béchamel Sauce

Béchamel is the mother sauce most cooks learn first: A simple white roux of flour and butter, whisked with milk or cream, then simmered until thickened. Because it’s so versatile, Béchamel easily crosses borders, appearing in recipes for a basic croque monsieur, moussaka, lasagna al forno, and chicken fried steak smothered with white gravy. This is the base for daughter sauces such as onion-infused Soubise or cheesy Mornay, which chef Darroze uses to assemble her creamy vegetable gratins.

Sauce Velouté

Velouté means “velvety” in French, and is the more complex sister of Béchamel. The recipe begins with a flour and butter roux that is cooked until slightly “blonde” in color, then blended with light stock instead of milk. Traditionally, this liquid was made with unroasted veal bones, but Escoffier also recommended versions with poultry or clear fish fumet. Sauce Velouté is often used as a base for soups such as this creamy chestnut potage. With the addition of lemon, egg yolks, and heavy cream, it’s also the base for a daughter sauce called Allemande or Parisienne, while adding shallots and white wine creates Sauce Bercy.

Hollandaise Sauce

Hollandaise Sauce is an egg emulsion—the glorious liason of butter, vinegar or lemon juice, and egg yolks that appears most often atop eggs Benedict. Also luscious drizzled over asparagus or poached salmon, it’s the base for equally beloved daughter sauce Béarnaise, in which we love to dip french fries. 

Sauce Tomate

This enriched tomato sauce is the French interpretation of the base most often appearing in the company of pasta. The key difference from most Italian versions is a starter roux of salt pork, butter, and flour. Never olive oil. One of its best-known daughters is the sunny sauce Provençal, made fragrant with the addition of capers, olives and herbes de Provence.

Sauce Espagnole

This rich brown sauce is characterized by strong meat stock, thickened with a dark roux. When reduced further, Espagnole becomes the liquid gold known as demi-glace. Rarely used alone, this mother sauce is essential to preparing daughters such as peppery Sauce Poivrade and wine-splashed Sauce Bourguignonne, both excellent with big, beefy dishes. 

Mayonnaise

Mayonnaise was not one of Auguste Escoffier’s original mother sauces, but the chilled, eggy dressing is as foundational to French cuisine as its five sisters, and so many believe it deserves equal status. We tend to agree—especially when used to make daughter sauces like Tartar Sauce, Rouille, or Remoulade.

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One of the most versatile of the French mother sauces, Sauce Tomate is the base for sunny caper-and-olive-studded Provençale Sauce and peppery Basque Piperade. Its influence can also be traced to other shores in such dishes as Senegalese Ndambé—cowpeas stewed in tomato sauce—or arguably even Southern tomato gravy. When preparing her version, French chef Hélène Darroze says she adds a small piece of veal to the sauce for depth of flavor, but we use veal or beef stock here.

Featured in: “The Mothers of All French Sauces.”

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The mother sauce Espagnole belongs to Escoffier’s brown sauces, and is distinguished with tomatoes introduced by Spanish cooks who arrived in the entourage of Infanta Ana María Mauricia, eldest daughter of Philip III of Spain, on the occasion of her marriage to Louis XIII in 1615. While rarely used on its own, sauce Espagnole shines atop fried potatoes; it’s also the base for more popular wine-enriched daughter sauces such as bourguignonne and hussarde, a variation of marchand du vin lavished atop one of our favorite Creole brunch dishes from Brennan’s Restaurant in New Orleans, where the staff creates sauce-themed floats for their annual Mother’s Day second line parade.

Featured in: “The Mothers of All French Sauces.”

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