Stocks, Soups and Mother Sauces
Stocks, Soups and Mother Sauces tests the foundation layer of the classical kitchen: the difference between stock types, how flavour is extracted and clarified, how soups are classified, and how the five mother sauces and their derivatives are built, seasoned and finished. Marks are lost on detail such as simmering temperature, roux ratios and derivative names.
Stocks
- Bones, mirepoix, bouquet garni, cold water, no salt.
- Start cold, bring to 85–95 °C and never boil, or emulsified fat clouds the stock; skim throughout.
- Times: fish fumet 20–30 minutes, chicken 3–4 hours, veal or beef 6–8 hours.
- Roughly 1 kg bones to 2 L water. Brown stock uses blanched, roasted dark bones, brown mirepoix and tomato purée.
- Strain through a chinois, cool fast, lift the fat, use within three days or freeze.
Soups
- Clear: broth and consommé, the latter clarified with a raft of egg white, lean mince, mirepoix and acid.
- Thick: cream, purée, velouté-based, bisque from shellfish, chowder.
- National and cold soups such as gazpacho and vichyssoise.
- Thicken with starch, purée, cream or a liaison of yolk and cream, which must never exceed 85 °C.
Mother sauces and derivatives
- Béchamel: milk plus white roux; derivatives Mornay, Nantua, crème.
- Velouté: white stock plus blond roux; derivatives suprême, allemande, ivoire.
- Espagnole: brown stock, brown roux, tomato and mirepoix; derivatives Bordelaise, chasseur, Robert.
- Sauce tomate, and hollandaise, a warm emulsion of yolk and clarified butter with an acid reduction; derivatives béarnaise, maltaise, mousseline.
- Roux is 1:1 by weight; about 60 g of roux thickens 1 L of liquid to coating consistency.
Worked example
20 portions of sauce chasseur at 100 ml means 2 L of sauce. The build is 0.5 L demi-glace plus 1.5 L brown stock, reduced with 150 ml white wine and 100 g shallots, then finished with 200 g sautéed mushrooms, tomato concassé, tarragon and a butter finish. The demi-glace itself is a 10:1 reduction, so 5 L of brown stock gives 0.5 L.
Traps that cost marks
- Salting a stock.
- Boiling stock and clouding it.
- Adding hot stock to hot roux all at once and producing lumps.
- Letting hollandaise exceed about 70 °C and split.