Mother Sauces
Aguste Escoffier, the father of classic French culinary practice, defined five mother sauces: béchamel, velouté, espagnole, hollandaise, and tomato. These five sauces are the basis of literally hundreds of other sauces. Master the preparation of the five mother sauces, and you are ready for the hundreds of variations.
Mother Dishes
Here I coin the term “Mother Dishes.” I think I can claim the origination of the term, because a recent internet search on “mother dishes” only returned links to articles about what to cook for your mom, particularly on Mother’s Day. To me, a mother dish is a dish that can be used flexibly with a wide variety of seasonal ingredients. My goal is to make seasonal cooking more straight forward. Mother dishes highlight using the ever changing fares of the local farmers’ market and the home garden. Master a mother dish, and you can use it in myriad ways. Master several mother dishes and you can always keep the variety plentiful.
The name is new, but the concept is not. Recipes with names like this can be found:
- The only recipe for X that you will ever need
- A no recipe recipe for X
- How to make X with whatever you’ve got
These are likely to be mother dishes.
