Sauces: Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making, 3rd Edition

The third edition of *Sauces* was released in 2008. This edition is by far the most helpful yet. It is exhaustive with regard to the sauces of french/continental cuisine as this is the tradition in which Peterson was trained, and in which he has developed the most expertise. However, despite that being his primary background, Peterson also includes discussion of many other types of sauces, from Mexican salsas and moles to Japanese dashi and teriyaki sauces; from Indian curries to Italian ragùs. There is an obvious emphasis on the continental tradition, and thus the majority of the book deals with such sauces and recipes. There is much less time and space dedicated to other international/ethnic culinary traditions, but the included info is valuable despite being limited. If, though, (for example) you primarily want to have an exhaustive list of recipes for Thai curries or Ethiopian wats, you might consider instead looking into cookbooks more specifically tailored to those cuisines. The text includes backgrounds of sauces, their relationships to one another, and, of course, recipes. The third edition brings back the valuable charts, diagramming sauce derivatives, relations, and additions, which had been omitted from the second edition. (Do not underestimate the value and utility of these charts!) This edition also includes dozens more recipes, but Peterson did not exclude any of the texts from previous editions that the current form could be as complete and useful as possible. Besides recipes, the book begins with a chapter briefly outlining the history of sauce-making from the Greco-Roman eras until today. This is followed by a chapter on equipment, describing both the necessary and the merely helpful, for sauce-making. The third chapter details ingredients used in sauces. Then the main body of the text discusses the sauces themselves, organized by various categories. The book also includes an index and glossary which I've found to be quite useful. This book is, at times, a bit on the technical side. Thus it is probably better suited for the intermediate or advanced cook. Professionals often keep a copy for reference, but beginning or novice home-cooks might find some of the content a bit too intimidating. This work rightfully deserves its reputation as the most authoritative and the definitive book on the subject of sauces and sauce-making.

This book provides you with the theory, history, and how to of the traditional mother sauces and numerous variations and stocks. I am fascinated by the indepth history of how each sauce developed into the current method. If you would like to make sauces in the traditional, modern, or contemporary styles, this book is terrific. Note: I feel there is an ambiguity in the recipe to Braised Short Ribs. The recipe calls for "sliced" onions to be roasted together with the short rib. However, roasting thinly sliced onions at 400 degrees resulted in them being burned. The burned onions took away from a sweetness that otherwise would have been present in the sauce. I would slice the onions about 1/4" thick, which will allow them to caramelize without seriously burning. Also, I felt there was a flavor missing, and after some thought maybe it was tomato or some more acid. When I consulted other recipes I see that the other recipes add tomato paste, where the recipe in Sauces does not. I would add it next time by smearing it on the ribs and veggies before they are roasted. Lastly, the recipe calls for removing the ribs from the stove and finishing them (and the sauce) in the oven. That final heating of the ribs in the oven was unnecessary. I would remove the ribs from the pot with a little of the braising liquid in a separate covered, unheated dish (so the beef reabsorbs the liquid as it cools) and finishing only the sauce in the oven (or on top of the stove). The final heating in the oven gave a slightly stringy/chewy texture to the beef, where previously it did not have that texture (I was tasting the ribs periodically).

Like many people in the last generation or so, I did not grow up with sauces. My mother told of the sauces that her mother made back after the depression, but dismissed these as being unhealthy and only useful as a way to stretch small portions of meat for a big family. However, a good sauce really can tie a meal together. It is a way of taking something good, and turning it into the sublime. It can even rescue something not-so-good and make it quite delicious. How many times have you seen children only willing to eat certain foods that are smothered in gravy or ketchup? And so we come to Peterson's "Sauces". This is not a book of recipes (although it contains many), but instead a history and a textbook of saucemaking. I didn't think that I was especially interested in sauces of the middle ages, but as I read that chapter I think that it gave me a better understanding of the foundations of sauces. If you are really interested in sauces, this book might be the only sauce book that you'll ever need. It will give you an understanding to become a sauce artist, and not just a sauce technician. I have only made a small dent in reading this tome, but already it has improved my cooking. I was recently able to put together a delicious mustard veloute that would have been impossible for me before reading this. If you are serious about sauces, especially if you are serious about cooking, then I highly recommend this book. If you are just looking for a couple of quick and easy sauce recipes to enhance your cooking, then I suggest you buy something a little 'lighter'.

In general, I like this book a lot. Other reviews have said a lot of good things, so I'll focus on a few problems I noticed in particular. As other reviews have stated, it discusses a wide variety of sauces and gives a lot of information about them. In essence, it is an encyclopedia of sauces, though I don't think it necessarily achieves its goal in being a good instructional book for this variety of sauces. The one significant problem with this book is that it tries a little too much to be a recipe book in addition to a textbook on sauces. The result is that a lot of space is taken up by recipes (which are quite good). However, I think many readers of this book are interested in sauce technique and background more than lots of recipes that are quite often just ways to use a sauce, rather than recipes that teach you a lot about the sauce. Why is this a problem? It isn't, if you just want a bunch of recipes that include a sauce. Or perhaps if you're buying this book to learn traditional French sauces and technique, which are explained in greater detail. But I already own books that have that information, and frankly there are other books that cover it better or at least as well (though with different emphasis). However, once you step outside those first few chapters on classic French sauces and get into other types of sauces -- pasta sauces, salsas, vinaigrettes, Asian sauces, etc. -- don't expect a lot of information other than general background and classification, along with a few recipes. For example, the pasta sauce chapter is about 20 pages long. After a few pages about pasta that have nothing to do with sauces (a table of shapes, info about serving sizes, etc.), we get a useful list of things to add to pasta along with butter or oil, followed by a few recipes that do this basic thing. Then we get into real sauces, including cream-based sauces (2 recipes), sauces based on preserved pork products (1 recipe), seafood sauces (4 recipes), vegetable sauces (3 recipes), meat sauces (2 recipes), and tomato sauces (1 recipe). The recipes take up about 90% of the chapter, with background to each of these sauce types taking up only a short paragraph or two for each one. And the recipes are far from representative of standard recipes designed to instruct about different sub-types of sauces or potential approaches -- they seem just to be random recipes. In other words, if you don't already know how to make a good pasta sauce, this book probably isn't going to teach you. It certainly doesn't give you enough information to come up with your own variations or even to produce the standard types of sauces for each type. These problems are perhaps the worst in the chapters near the end, which deal with sauces outside the traditional French mainstream. But there are similar issues even in the chapters closer to that tradition. (For example, I find the mayonnaise chapter particularly disappointing in its limited coverage of mayonnaise-based sauces outside of classic French variants.) Lastly, this book has a lot of information that isn't about sauces (concerning equipment, ingredients, etc.). Perhaps this doesn't need to be said, but don't take this information as gospel -- if you want to get good advice about cookware, for example, consult another book more suited to that sort of thing. While some of these digressions are relevant to sauce-making (e.g., kitchen equipment specialized for sauces), there is a lot of general information as well... and it's not always 100% accurate. Again, as with the multitude of random recipes, I feel these digressions could have been left out and replaced with more information actually on the primary subject of the book. All of this said, if you're looking for a decent introduction to traditional French sauces, with a lot of recipes, this book is pretty good.

This tome on sauce making is easily the most thorough coverage I have ever been exposed to. Well, it's the only one I've been exposed to, and I doubt there is anything as complete as this. Readable, in-depth, expansive, edifying, and complete. This is a book that needs to be studied and intellectually digested over a period of time as if one were attending college to become a world class chef. This is professional material and should be treated accordingly. A prized gift for the professional, the potential professional, and the (really) serious home cook. That being said, if you want to just whip up a quick sauce in the pan, I'm not sure this will serve your needs. There are dozens of sauce recipes, and they're good, but the idea behind the book is to teach you how to use a particular technique, then apply your knowledge in your own unique way. This is a "get a PHD in sauces", not a whip-it-up-quick index card recipe book. Twenty muscular chapters include: 1. A Short History of Sauce Making 2. Equipment 3. Ingredients 4. Stocks, Glaces, and Essences 5. Liaisons: An Overview 6. White Sauces for Meat and Vegetables 7. Brown Sauces 8. Stock-Based and Non-Integral Fish Sauces 9. Integral Meat Sauces 10. Integral Fish and Shellfish Sauces 11. Crustacean Sauces 12. Jellies and Chauds-Froids 13. Hot Emulsified Egg Yolk Sauces 14. Mayonnaise-Based Sauces 15. Butter Sauces 16. Salad Sauces, Vinaigrettes, and Relishes 17. Pruees and Puree-Thickened Sauces 18. Pasta Sauces 19. Asian Sauces 20. Dessert Sauces A superb instructional manual that will make you an expert if you study and apply some effort. It gets my highest rating and reccommendation for anyone who craves praise for their cooking prowess (like me). - Alleyrat

I bought this book because I was never quite satisfied with the sauces I made. This book definitely teaches how to create better sauces, but it is much much more. It makes you a better cook. There are great recipes in the book, but the focus is on techniques. Similar sauces may be prepared using flour as a thickener, by reduction, unbound, with or without cream/butter/egg yolks. The author lays a foundation on which the reader can then creatively build further. This is not a diet book, but I actually started using less added fat. For me, the most important lesson from this book: techniques that are feasible for the home cook but virtually impossible for restaurants. Just by focusing on these, one can create a-better-than-restaurant experience at home. While aimed at advanced home cooks and professional chefs, beginners should not be afraid of this book. It is clearly written and the philosophy behind the book frees you from recipes. If you like a flavor combination, you will find any number of techniques to get them to the table in an appealing dish.

The subtitle on the jacket says it all - classic and contemporary sauces. A more all - encompassing book does not exist. I have been involved in various types of food service, from executive chef in a private country club to the chef/kitchen manager in a Victorian mansion converted to an intimate dining space serving haute cuisine, and Peterson's book was always on hand. I gave it to an apprentice long ago, but I just had to have one again for my 'library'. Too bad it wasn't the first edition, but my student loves it and refers to it as much as I did! Thanx for providing me with this invaluable tome - it's much appreciated.

Wanna know how to make a sauce for pasta, meats, poultry, seafood, asian dishes, desserts, dressings for salads, and everything in between? This is your book. It covers the history of sauce making, the tools you'll need, all of the different ingredients under the sun, techniques, and even gives sources and purveyors of all things saucery. It's possibly the end-all-be-all of sauce making. You'll find yourself making sauces for food you don't have. You'll salivate over the glossy pages in the center of the book with all the super awesome foods that you'll probably never cook. You're hands will be dyed green from the joy you get with running your greedy little digits through that perfecto pesto you made. You'll make more mayonnaise than one person should ever be allowed to make because it tastes so much better than the store bought canned stuff (plus it makes your hair shiny and more manageable). You'll love this book. If you don't you can use the book for curls to get your guns in shape for the beach because it is a hefty tome. Enjoy your saucing!

Discovered this by accident when Googling a lamb recipe, loads of useful classical theory and practice, no dud information in here (which can't be said of many cookbooks)

Good reference

This book is too good. It has everything in it that you'd want to know about sauces. I'd like to see modern Hydrocolloids in the book. But this is no detraction. It is thorough and has great history.

Basic sauces are always good for fundamentals.

Buy it, read it and make some wonderfully delicious sauces! This is the best book on sauces I ever came across.