The Sauce Bible: Guide to the Saucier's Craft

by David Paul Larousse

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.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Culinary

400 pages, Hardcover

First published July 5, 1993

Reviews

[Lynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not really a book for cooks. Both amateurs and working chefs will find that The Sauce Bible is way out of date.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

[Jody · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok not to sure how to rate this book has some great recipes. Four peppercorns sauce, Pinot sauce , raspberry ginger raspberry tangerine for duck is lovely but recipes are very nouveau and outdated has all the classics so your chicken stock turns into veloute into Bercy ect into sixty three different sauces pretty much covers all your sauces in traditional and all derivatives of that sauce but don’t really like the way the recipe is written like the Albert sauce is just time consuming and difficult to remember. But it does have a lot of recipes on classic sauces, vinaigrettes, salsas, relishes, compound butters and all the basic cuts worth reading and trying it has 382 pages with over 600 recipes but only 16 full colour photos that are very outdated. There is a chapter on sauce painting which is also outdated but can be useful for the modern chef

[Ricardo Marcos · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very good introductory book to the craft of Saucier. It is a recipe book above all. If a cook reads a book of recipe, he/she will know how to put the book (or its contents) its own historical context. With this book, the reader cannot expect to read about modern culinary techniques or tools/equipments. It would be like reading Escoffier's recipes expecting elBulli techniques. The real value of this book is in the recipes and other small tips & tricks. Yes, it is outdated (perhaps, because there are no pictures?!). But still is a very good book. I recommend it.

[Eslam Kahiluh]

very good book