Customer Reviews

The Sauce Bible: Guide to the Saucier's Craft

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

`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.

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.

This is a wonderful book that gives recipes for many wonderful and delicious sauces and the dishes that go with them. These recipes allow you to prepare professional tasting sauces in a matter of minutes. They are presented in a very user-friendly way with many interesting stories and historical notes. Friends will be amazed when you present dishes such as Filet Mignon with Four Peppercorn Sauce or my favorite Roquefort Cream Sauce. This book inspired me to become a professional chef!

This is a book for the scholar rather than the cook. Both amateurs and working chefs will find that The Sauce Bible is way out of date. Most seriously, there is no discussion of blenders and food processors -which only show up in the recipe for peanut sauce. There's no evidence of concern with lower-calorie sauces. (The brief section on chutneys seems half-finished and carelessly done.)
Larousse does make passing mention of Escoffier's fascination with Jus Lié, the juice of roast meats thickened with corn starch or arrowroot. Escoffier recognized, and Larousse points out that the protein in flour gets in the way of the proper thickening of a liquid. But his book is too early (1993) to describe the advantages of Wondra and other low-protein, pregelatinized wheat flours. These have been formulated to dissolve quickly in either hot or cold liquids and have transformed sauce-making my allowing almost any liquid to be thickened without creating a gummy consistency. The saucier's options are therefore much greater today and it's probably time for a new addition.
The index is sadly, near useless-where's the entry for hollandaise?

That said, this book still has a place on my kitchen bookshelf. It assumes that you know which flavors you want to add when and that you don't need to be told that a celery sauce is good with shrimp or a zabaglione with fruit. There is a lovely and useful section on arabesques-those little plate paintings that lead your eye to the food in so many good restaurants these days. The photographs are delicious.

--Lynn Hoffman author of New Short Course in Wine,The and the remarkably saucy bang BANG: A Novel

Preface: I am a novice sauce maker:

I read the chapters covering history, stock, and the mother sauces. I enjoyed the history and the basics covered on the mother sauces and stock were covered in a satisfactory manner.

My first indication that I didn't like the book was the recipe for veloute. It wasn't until after a few batches of experimenting that i managed to get a reasonable roux going. Also, some things like final liasons and glaces aren't covered too much. In fact a lot of things are mentioned but never discussed in depth.

Some of the recipes are great though, and there are a ton of them.

Try something else before this book.

This book is a wonderful addition to my library. So far I have tried the Lemon Cream sauce and the Mango and Port Cream sauce. The recipes were easy to follow and the sauces turned out fantastic. This book seems to include just about every sauce a home cook will ever come by, and more.

There are many other sauces I still need to try but I am having difficulty deciding what dish to make the sauce for. In the margin by some of the sauces, there are some very general examples of what the sauce may go with. These are few and far between. The book is also laid out by sauce type rather than dish, making it even harder to find the correct sauce to go with the dish.

I am still a novice at making sauces, but I do have some experience with cooking. This book is more suited to someone with more experience with sauces. I highly recommend this book for those of you out there who have such experience. For those of us who don't have the same level of expertise, I still recommend this book as the more our skills are honed, the more valuable this book will become. It is also great fun experimenting with the sauces to discover the correct fit. Again, there are a plethora of sauces to experiment with and I look forward to working with this easy to follow book and trying to find the correct fit for the sauce.

If you know what you are doing in the kitchen, this book is a great tool. If you already know what flavors go with what...then this book will help you find a sauce to match. Don't buy this book thinking that it is a "Racheal Ray" type book that tells you what to put with these recipes. When buying this book, you should already know how to build a flavor profile and you shouldn't expect this book to build it for you. It's exactly what it says it is...a sauce book. It sometimes will give you some recommendations but mostly you have to figure that out yourself.

Indepth and instructive,informative and relateble, Great for the begginer, novice, expert, or home cook both men and women. Thank You.

Very Helpful, I Keep It Close At Hand When I Am Cooking. Has Helped Me Several Times When I Needed That Little Something Extra. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED