Let’s talk about sauce.

We don’t think much about sauces until we get a bad one. You know that packet flavoured gloop thrown on top of an other wise good Parmi? A good sauce should add flavour, moisture and visual appeal. Sauce is a French word taken from the Latin Salsa, meaning salted.

In the days before refrigeration

In the days before refrigeration, when foods took longer to get from the source of supply to the kitchen, sauces were richer and more highly concentrated than they are today, the reason being they were often used to disguise the staleness of the meat or fish. Present day requests for more of a complementary sauce or one to aid digestion such as that of apple sauce with pork.

There are five French sauces that every cook should know. It will add to your cooking repertoire and if you suffer from dysphagia, will add a whole new dimension to what you can potentially eat.

These five sauces (mother sauces) are the basic building blocks of all other sauces and it is imperative to master these (well at least a couple) so that you can build on your ability to improve & increase the array of food you can potentially eat orally.

The ingredients required are basic, and in mastering them, you open yourself up to the creation of many great classic dishes. The building blocks of sauces should enable you to dollop and drizzle your way through eating by creating a medium that clings and smothers your food. Sauces should be ‘stable’ meaning they don’t separate. The techniques to accomplish this will form part of this month’s activity for The Food Manifesto . Available only to members – you can join here.