Customer Reviews

The Saucier's Apprentice: A Modern Guide to Classic French Sauces for the Home

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you're interested in the great French sauces, this is the book for you. Julia Child is a wonderful beginning in that direction, and she also has arranged the sauces more or less by family. But Sokolov takes it to the ultimate degree, particularly with his classical renditions of the "mother sauces". The sauces you will eventually end up with are generally far better than you will ever get in any restaurant outside of France. And even in France, in these degenerate days, most restaurants take shortcuts in making the brown sauces.

One or two or three caveats: if you make the "mother sauce" espagnole, and then the demi-glace, following his recipe, you are going to need at least *two* enormous, restaurant-sized kettles. I had one very large one to start with and at some point in the proceedings had to go out and buy another one. He wasn't very clear about this.

Plus, he consistently understates the *time* needed to do these recipes, perhaps because he doesn't want to frighten the reader away. He says, for instance, that to make the espagnole-demi-glace, you can do it easily over a weekend in bits and pieces, stepping away from the kitchen occasionally to pass the time with "Fanny Hill" (he's also a wonderfully witty and amusing writer into the bargain). But he is seriously wrong about this particular recipe, the most important one in the book. I am a very experienced cook, and I work fairly quickly, and I undertook this recipe with my French wife, another serious cook, plus occasional help from my mother, *another* very serious cook, and it essentially took *three* days to end up with, as I recall, 18 1-cup frozen portions of demi-glace. Plus there's an *enormous* amount of shopping to do to get the various ingredients -- even in San Francisco it necessitated several trips to wholesale meat markets and latino markets on Market Street for some of the more recondite items. You're never going to find all those bones and pig rinds at your local Safeway....

Also, you need to have a *strong* person around to lift and carry a 20- or 30-gallon stock pot loaded to the very top with 10 pounds of bones, 10 pounds of meat, lotsa veggies, and gallons of water. This is never mentioned by him.

This book is *not* for the neophyte or the dilettante, although most of the white sauces are a snap to make compared to the basic brown one. If you're only interested in white sauces, a beginning cook could use this book easily....

Whatever my caveats, however, this is still a 5-star book. And, as I said, he's a wonderfully witty writer.

I have browsed through many sauce books in the past several years, and found two to be indispensable: Raymond Sokolov's THE SAUCIER'S APPRENTICE and Michel Roux's SAUCES. Both books accomplish their goals impeccably. Roux wishes to present readers with a faster way to produce restaurant quality sauces, providing readers with beautiful appetizing photos for each sauce in the process. It is a book meant not to scare off amateur chefs who are inclined to choose a "Betty Crocker" book rather than a real top notch text on traditional French cooking. Sokolov, on the other hand, appeals to the already converted French gourmet/gourmand. There are no photos, nor are they necessary, since his language is so descriptive and precise, it really creates a photo in your mind.

I spent two days preparing the mother sauce for brown sauces and the result was spectacular. I've eaten at many of the top four and five star restaurants in New York, many restaurants throughout Europe (I lived in Germany near the French border for over three years), many restaurants in Chicago, and have never tasted better sauces than those I produced at home from the mother sauce. Here's the trick. You should follow Sokolov's instructions. After you've been through the process, you can get creative if you wish. But keep in mind Sokolov's goal is to teach amateur and professional chefs how to make TRADITIONAL SAUCES, not modern incarnations that use lots of fruits, etc.

I'm a culinary student here in New York and I picked up this book on the advise of my chef-instructor. I'm glad I listened to him. This book inspired my instructor to become a chef and to make almost every sauce in the book.

As for the book, it's pretty straightforward. It starts with a brief history of French sauces and then it pretty much goes right into the sauces. There are 5 mother sauces (Sauce Espagnole, Hollandaise, Béchamel, Velouté, and Tomato) and from these 5 you can make hundreds and hundreds of little derivative sauces. For example, take Sauce Espagnole (Brown Sauce). If you combine equal parts of Brown Sauce and Brown Veal Stock and let that reduce, you've got Demi-Glace (Half-Glaze). Now if you sauté some mushrooms, shallots, add some white wine, Madeira, some demi-glace and tomato, you've got Sauce Chasseur.

Here's another example. Take Velouté, add some mushroom liquid and a liaison, and mount the sauce with butter and you've got Sacue Allemande. Now take Sauce Allemande and add three simple ingredients and you've got Sauce Aux Champignons.

There are about 70 pages devoted to just brown sauces. The two most time consuming mother sauces to make is Sauce Espagnole and Velouté. Both require stock, however, Velouté is easy to make since it only takes 30 to 40 minutes to make once you have the stock. Sauce Espagnole, on the other hand, takes about 6 to 8 hours to make. Plus you need brown veal stock which takes anywhere from 8-11 hours to make.

As you can see it's pretty time consuming but if you take one weekend to make enough stock, once you're done you can freeze them in ice cube trays and take them as you need them. Remember the derivative sauces are really quick and simple, it's the mother sauces that take the most time.

If you're serious about cooking, I highly recommend this book.

I purchased this book after reading praise for it from Tom Fitzmorris, a local New Orleans food critic/restaurant reviewer/chef-in-his-own-right. The book was a worthwhile investment. The recipes are organized by "sauce families," or groups of sauce variations that are created from one "mother sauce." Sauce "family trees" are even presented graphically, which helps readers see the range of flavors that complement the original mother sauces (useful in creating your own kitchen variations). Many of the recipes make very large quantities of sauce, but - if you've got the freezer space - they do freeze easily, so don't be intimidated by the quantities. The anecdotes surrounding the naming of sauces and the traditional meal recipes for each sauce are written with dry humor, and will interest and amuse people who are into food. I found myself laughing out loud at times. I view this book partly as an archive for recipes that have fallen out of use (in this age of prions and "mad cow disease", it may be a while before bovine brains are a widely accepted ingredient again) and partly as a fundamental textbook for fine cooking. Every serious cook should own a copy.

The saucemaking of classical French Haute Cuisine is a profession in itself, and there is a 'theory' or method behind it's madness. One begins with a 'sauce mere' (the mother sauce), then converts it in a series of steps (involving the addition of new flavors, the straining of spent ingredients, and concentration by simmering), finally 'finishing' the sauce with the addition of delicate herbs or flavorings that would be lost with continued heating. For example, the sauce mere 'demi-glace' (brown sauce thickened with flour and flavored with herbs and wine) is converted to sauce Robert by concentrating with more wine, and then finishing off the heat with butter and mustard.

This is the best book I've seen on the subject. Serious saucemaking is time consuming, but if the sauce meres are made in quantity and frozen in portions, the final assembly of nearly every sauce in the book may be accomplished as your dinner vegetables steam - by understanding the theory of progression from one sauce to the next, and devoting perhaps one Saturday every few months to keeping an eye on a stock pot, one may enjoy the sophistication of classical Haute Cuisine with the convenience of bottled substitutes. The initial chapters discussing the history of Haute Cuisine is a treat in itself. Most of the 100+ sauce recipes are followed with the recipe for a single classic example dish where it is featured.

When served with a fine sauce, your family and guests will close their eyes and savor every bite of your meal. Nice...

The Saucier's Apprentice is an invaluable tool for the serious cook. It is full of all the classic souces plus recipes that go superbly with them. With the easy to follow recipes anyone can make sauces like the pro's

I have owned this book for over 20 years and still use it regularly. I am not a professional, but I can make suaces on any give day that compare favorably -- or outshine -- what is served in many top restaurants. The book's menus are a bit dated, favoring adaptations of classics, but you miss the point if you doggedly follow them. This book teaches you about making a virtually endless arrray of sauces, using classical techniques. Once you master the "mother" or foundation suaces, there is no limit to what you can imitate or invent. There is real work involved here, and you may need some additional equipment, but you can be smart about it. I make huge batch of demi-glace each winter and freeze it in small portions, which translates into a one-year gold mine of possibilities. This is a great source; I can't imagine life without it.

It's hard to believe that Sokolov was the first to systematize the repetoir of French sauces: once you've read his outline, which uses bases, methods, and additional ingredients to clearly chart the classic sauces, you will never again see the saucier's craft as mysterious and impenetrable. The organization is so lucid and well-conceived that you will forever after be able to conjure a most accessible mental diagram of what was, until this book, all but hermetic. The book is organized around chapters for each of the basic sauce groups: brown sauces, white sauces, Bechamels, emulsified sauces, and butter sauces. Additional sections cover compound butter sauces and desert sauces. He includes 'geneologies' of brown sauces, ordinary veloute sauces, chicken veloute sauces, fish fumet and veloute sauces, and Bechamels. With this system in place, one can see clearly that most French sauces start with bases to which certain ingredients and techniques are applied to make the sauce suitable for certain dishes. The 'geneologies' are clearly charted, with demi-glace [the base for 'brown' sauces] above Bourgignonne and Duxelles [two of the 25 classic, orthodox, brown sauces that include demi-glace], for example, and then the recipes show not just the base, but the individual variants AND good recipes for dishes that classically rely upon that sauce.

At the heart of all this systematizing are a couple of hard truths: to make Sauce Chasseur, which in itself appears not too formidable, one must first make the demi-glace, the Sauce Tomate, and the glace de viande it lists, rather coyly I must say, as ingredients. The 10 ingredients of Sauce Chasseur, plus the 16 ingredients of demi-glace, plus the 12 ingredients of Sauce Tomate, plus the glace de viande, which is a highly-reduces demi-glace, turns out to be one hell of a recipe. The idea, of course, is that you make the bases ahead of time and freeze them, and then use them as needed. Bloody hell. The results are spectacular, and so is the labor required to get there. BUT: what greater gift can you give your friends than a classic sauce a couple of times a year? Except it be to lay down your life for them?

The book is entertaining and informative even if you won't, really, ever cook from it. But if you are one of the few, crazed, determined food acolytes out there, buy this book and a 40-quart stock pot and 20 lbs of veal bones...

I first was introduced to this book at culinary school in the early 1990s. This is a modern look at the classic techniques of the 19th century Escoffier, the foremost authority on French cookery as established by Careme. Escoffier brought order to the professional kitchen, and maintained the high standards of the French palate. The recipes included in this book, however antiquated, are the basic principles of cooking all professional chefs, and serious "foodies" alike, should use in their cooking every day. With a little imagination, every cook can create his or her own signature dishes by using delicious sauces to accompany their fresh and perfectly cooked meat, fish or vegetable. Even more delightful, the historian in me is fascinated with the historical accounts of the development of French cookery; and the comic in me so enjoys the wit used in the author's address to such a serious subject of many a cook's discipline and heart.

If you like to cook and are interested in different sauces.this is a great buy!!!