{^ ITALIAN-AMERICAN

PASTA SAUCE (^) }
Pasta without sauce is like the Lone Ranger without Tonto.
Milli without Vanilli. Mario without Luigi. R2D2 without . . .
You get the picture.
You’ve all heard of the French “mother sauces,” right?
Back in the early twentieth century. Auguste Escoffier, the
granddaddy* of French cuisine, classified all French sauces
into five categories: béchamel (milk thickened with starch),
espagnole (brown veal stock), velouté (a thickened white
stock), hollandaise (an egg-yolk-and-butterfat emulsion),
and tomate (tomato-based). His idea was that by learning
how to properly make these five sauces, you would have the
basics to make hundreds of derivative sauces. For instance,
sauce mornay is a béchamel with the addition of cheese.
Sauce bordelaise is espagnole sauce with reduced wine and
bone marrow. Béarnaise is Hollandaise made with reduced
white wine, shallots, and tarragon (see here). And so on.
Well, over the years, I’ve noticed while making Italian-
American (and many downright Italian) pasta dishes at
home that there are also five basic sauces that form the root
of just about every other sauce in the lexicon. Just as in
French cuisine, by perfecting my techniques for these basic
categories of sauces, I’d in effect be setting myself up to
succeed in any number of variations based on them.