The Secret is in the Sauce
What’s in a sauce? Perhaps a lot, even though there may be few ingredients.
A sauce is simply a thick or thin liquid that partners with a dish’s main ingredient, or ingredients. There are hundreds of them! But what all sauces do is strive to make the dish taste better.
They do that with intense flavours and pleasing textures. The myriad sauces that a cook can make, therefore, represent an equal number of flavours that can be added. And all of that in order to satisfy a dining customer.
There is, in fact, a family of classic French sauces, which includes Espagnole, veloute, béchamel, Hollandaise, and mayonnaise. Those are broken down further into their sauce derivatives, “spin-offs” if you like, such as poivrade, Bordelaise, Bearnaise, and a stock-pot full of others.
Showcase the Value of Sauce
Chef Technologist Paul Torrance oversees “bloom.” restaurant at the Waterloo campus of Conestoga College. As a Certified Chef de Cuisine, who teaches in the school’s culinary program, Torrance sees sauces as critical to boosting the value of virtually any dish and at the same time helping showcase your restaurant and the cooks who work there.
Dorothy Sanderson, Flanagan Territory Manager, agrees. She says sauces turn the ordinary into the extraordinary, where a humble chicken breast can evolve quickly and inexpensively into a finer dish.
“You can get an Asian-influenced sauce with curry or Thai flavours; take a demi-glace (an Espagnole sauce cooked with beef stock and Madeira or sherry and reduced by half) and add nuts to it. Sauces represent an opportunity for operators to really jazz up their menu,” Sanderson said.
According to Torrance there is an important comfort-food appeal to sauces in that great chefs just about anywhere will recall “sauce with food” memories growing up as a cook including even simple sauces like Hollandaise or mayonnaise. There may only be three or four ingredients, but it’s more the technique and skill to produce it that makes the difference.
“That skill can elevate an ordinary piece of meat beyond what someone might be able to do at home. Sauces can have highly intensified flavours cooked into them,” said Torrance.
“Then there is the shine and sheen of the sauce that is important,” he adds. “It’s critical how it is handled just before plating, mounting it with butter, herbs, perhaps an acid, and balancing the seasoning.”
For her part, Sanderson points out that sauce doesn’t need to be difficult and there are alternatives to roasting bones and 24-hour simmering stock pots. “Thinking of sauces scares some operators,” she said. “Either they don’t have the time or the skill and knowledge in the kitchen. But sauces can make you a lot of money.”
They aren’t just for high-end dining either. “I was working with a customer who is using a wide variety of sauces like basil pestos and aiolis for her panini. It’s the sauces which are making these her signature sandwiches,” Sanderson said.
Sauce Trends
So what does the sauce landscape look like? According to Darren Climans, senior director of market information for Direct Link, an organization dedicated to providing information and insight into the Canadian Foodservice industry for more than 10 years, traditional gravies and emulsions fell in popularity somewhat in 2010 from the previous year.
Direct Link tracks restaurant industry trends via broadline distributors and independent restaurant operators across Canada. Within their “Menu Database of Innovative Independent Restaurant Operators”—leading-edge independents—dessert sauces like passion fruit and grape, protein reductions, and vinegar-based sauces (gastriques) are showing growth. On the savoury side, peppercorn, garlic, and duck sauces are trending upwards.
What’s happening with these independents represents what is likely to become popular down the road, Climans explained. “Even in the mainstream—what people are eating in a variety of foodservice outlets from coffee shops to chain steak houses—the biggest growth has been in specialty sauces. That is particularly true of Asian sauces such as Thai, satay, and hoi sin.”
If we say, anecdotally, that in tougher economic times there is a growth in comfort food’s appeal, then that appears true, according to Direct Link: traditional comfort-food sauces like Alfredo and Tartar have also shown growth.
But the popular Chinese sauce known as General Tso’s, and typically used in the chicken dish that takes his name, grew dramatically in popularity in 2010, said Climans. “It’s fairly common in ethnic restaurants but it’s starting to move into the mainstream.”
In the more rarefied sauce atmosphere, Torrance sees a trend toward what he calls “the moleculars,” including funky foams and wispy, bubbly airs. “People are certainly leaning toward lighter-tasting sauces. But as much as you talk about those things I don’t think you are going to get away from the classic French sauces. Diners say they don’t want cream and butter, but those are always going to be the backbone of the best cooking.”
As for ethnic sauces, those have become easier and easier to prepare because ingredients and flavourings are more readily available than even five years ago, from annatto to star anise to za’atar.
Sauce Makes a First Impression
Lastly, remember that customers “eat with their eyes first,” and it is the sauce that might be last on the plate but the first thing that the diner notices, even before the main ingredient is seen, let alone eaten. Torrance recommends taking the time to make sure the plate is sauced in an appealing manner, and remember that depending on the type of restaurant and the resources available, a sauce itself can be a spectacle, he says.
“I like sauces poured in the dining room. You can see the protein presentation without any juices or liquids covering it up. And then there is some interaction with the guest when front-of-house staff adds it to the plate right at the table, as opposed to in the kitchen out of the view of the diner.”
