The Sauce Bible: Guide to the Saucier's Craft [Hardcover]

David Paul Larousse (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 28, 1993

A complete contemporary reference on the subject of stocks and sauces, including complete instructions for creating ``arabesques'' of sauce paintings. Features anecdotes, miniature biographies regarding several major and minor contributors to modern cooking techniques as well as historical and linguistic references to specific dishes. Numerous sauces and accompaniments created by other culinary professionals are also included.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

A complete contemporary reference on the subject of stocks and sauces, including complete instructions for creating ``arabesques'' of sauce paintings. Features anecdotes, miniature biographies regarding several major and minor contributors to modern cooking techniques as well as historical and linguistic references to specific dishes. Numerous sauces and accompaniments created by other culinary professionals are also included.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (May 28, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471572284
• ISBN-13: 978-0471572282
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 8.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #489,934 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

81 of 82 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not just your average 'recipe book' cookbook..., April 20, 2000

By 

L.C. "l_conover" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Sauce Bible: Guide to the Saucier's Craft (Hardcover)

This book is more of a detailed textbook than a cookbook. It goes into a detailed history of how sauces developed over the last few centuries - dating all the way back to the Roman feasts. Better yet, it doesn't give mere recipes - it details the hows and whys of good sauce making.

This book may be too detailed for an amateur cook to use. It's not the sort of book that you simply take a recipe and use, not unless you're already well-skilled in the saucier's art. It does take the time to explain all the french cookery terms that make up the vocabulary of the text, and if you're willing to actually take the time to learn all the skills Chef Laurousse is teaching, you'll be a far better chef for it.

42 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Professional text and reference. Buy it if you make sauces!, May 2, 2006

By 

B. Marold "Bruce W. Marold" (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Sauce Bible: Guide to the Saucier's Craft (Hardcover)

`The Sauce Bible' by culinary educator, David Paul Larousse is one of those very few books you find which are specifically written for culinary professional. The first clue is the high list price of $54.95. The second is that textbook specialist, John Wiley and Sons publish it. The third is the fact that the book began as an essay on sauce painting, which the average foodie will admire, but, to my knowledge, will virtually never try to reproduce. The fourth clue is that the quantities for many of the recipes are a lot larger than one would need for a dish for four or six. The fifth clue is the large amount of narrative and graphics devoted to explaining the relationships between members of the various sauce families, based on the famous French `mother sauces'.

That is not to say the average cooking enthusiast couldn't get something from this book. The biggest question is whether this book is better than the standard modern work in English, James Peterson's `Sauces'. The very first comparison I did was on the two books' treatments of `beurre blanc' or white butter sauce commonly used for fish and often used as an exemplar of `nouvelle cuisine' cooking, although the recipe is much older than the 1970's. I think the treatment of this by the two different books is a good indication of the books' relative strengths and weaknesses. While Larousse has, by a very rough count, 480 recipes to Peterson's 350, Peterson gives more details on the techniques used for each individual recipe, while Larousse spends more time on general material. Peterson's recipe, with introduction and variations, takes up over three pages, including tips on saving the sauce for later use. Larousse' recipe for basic `beurre blanc' takes about half a page, although later recipes such as Bercy and Chambertin are variations. Oddly, Peterson includes in the basic recipe a step to strain the solids, primarily the shallot, out of the final product, while Larousse give no such instruction until we get to the recipe for the Chambertin sauce.

So, for the amateur chef, Peterson may really be the better book, since he is more detailed in his recipes for very common sauces, even if he is a bit fussy for the amateur. But, I really think that a dedicated foodie will want both books. While Peterson is probably the better quick reference, Larousse is better in understanding the relations between all members of the sauce families. And, he certainly covers more different classically named sauces. Peterson, for example, gives no mention or recipe for Chambertin sauce, at least it is neither in his list of recipes or in his index. And, you will certainly want Larousse if you wish to understand sauce painting the way they do it a fancy restaurants and on the `Iron Chef America'.

I have seen at least two less expensive trade paperback books on sauces and while I believe both are decent, I strongly recommend one of these two books for the dedicated foodie in preference to a shorter book. I am especially respectful of Larousse's tutorial on the making of stocks. His recipes and techniques are certainly useable by the home cook, although they would meet no one's notion of quick cooking, as the longer ones take from eight to twelve hours for optimum results. The only thing I missed in this volume was the concept so artfully stated by Deborah Madison where she proclaims that stocks should be crafted to meet their specific uses.

Highly recommended for the professional and the dedicated foodie.

70 of 78 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good Sauces--Bad book, October 1, 2001

By 

Erik (Needham, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Sauce Bible: Guide to the Saucier's Craft (Hardcover)

The book presents hundreds of interesting sauces but is not organized in a way that allows you to know what sauce to use and when. Rather than index sauces to match foods, this book presents a small blurb of suggested foods next to each of 600+ receipies. For example, I opened the book at random to a sauces that was recommended for crab cakes. But if I wanted to prepare crab cakes and was looking for a sauce, I would have had to read past 200 pages and 300 recipies before I found this one. The publisher could have spent a few hundred dollars to create an index of sauces that would have increased the value of this book ten fold. Too bad they didn't.