Foodie Skills: Sauce Cookery

The five French mother sauces are the foundation behind more dishes than you’d ever guess, from a simple cream sauce to a rich pan gravy to the base of a homemade soup. This cooking class walks you through how to build each one from scratch, understanding not just the steps but the science behind the techniques.

Once you’ve got the fundamentals down, you’ll learn how professional kitchens use those five sauces as a starting point, adding herbs, wine, cream, or aromatics to invent something new. Working alongside one of our professional chefs, you’ll leave with a solid understanding of how to make any sauce you can imagine. Which is the kind of skill that turns a plain piece of protein into a dish you crave.

Curriculum

Mother Sauces
You’ll build each of the five classic mother sauces from scratch: Bechamel, Espagnole, Hollandaise, Tomato, and Veloute. Each one uses a different base and technique, from a roux-thickened white sauce to a delicate egg emulsion. These 5 sauces form the backbone that nearly every other sauce in Western cooking is built from.

Derivative Sauces
Once you understand mother sauces, you’ll learn how small, deliberate additions transform them into something entirely different. Sauces like Marinara, Puttanesca, Mushroom Supreme, and Green Peppercorn & Cognac. This is where technique turns into creativity, using a solid base and your own instincts to build flavours all your own.