Sauce in World Cuisine: Easy Sauces, Classic Sauces, Piquant Sauces
17 July 2012
Sauce is a very important part of the world cuisine. You can find traditional sauces in almost every cuisine, because they add flavour, moisture to the food, make it look more appetizing and taste more savory. Sauces are not served as a separate dish, they are always used with another food – in the process of cooking or to serve. Sauces can be liquid, creaming or semi-solid, depending on ingredients and main dishes.
The history of sauce using goes back to the 200 A.D., when ancient Romans cooked and used sauces to disguise the taste of the food. As a matter of fact, in those days food was not always fresh and good, so people needed something to add to dishes to kill bad smell and flavour.
Different sauces can be cooked and served either cold or warm. E.g. we cook and use béchamel warm, but pesto is cooked cold and served warm, apple sauce is both cooked and served cold etc. Some sauces we can buy in a store (mayonnaise, Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, soy sauce), another are only made at home just before serving (béchamel, onion sauce, pesto). There are also sauces for salads, they are called salad dressings.
We can divide sauces into:
- white sauces;
- brown sauces;
- sauces made of chopped fresh ingredients;
- sweet sauces;
- emulsified sauces;
- butter sauces;
- hot sauces.
Some cuisines use more different sauces than others. For example, Asian countries (China, Japan, Korea), Latin American countries etc.
Sauce recipes
Classic Sauces
Piquant Sauces
Grilled red pepper sauce for char-grilled chicken breasts
Mediterranean grilled vegetable sauce
Dressings
Sauces made of chopped fresh ingredients