other to form brown pigments and a host of
new flavor molecules (p. 778). But if the
juices remain juices, they constitute a very
basic sauce, a product of the meat that can be
added back to moisten and flavor the mass of
coagulated muscle protein from which they’ve
been squeezed. The problem is that the meat
or fish only gives up a small amount of juice
compared to the solid mass. To satisfy fully
our appetite for those juices, cooks have
invented methods for making meat and fish
sauces for their own sake, and in any quantity.
The main thickening agent in these sauces is
gelatin, an unusual protein that cooking
releases from the meat and fish. Cooks also
use other animal proteins to thicken sauces,
but their behavior is very different and more
problematic, as we’ll see (p. 603).
The Uniqueness of Gelatin
Gelatin is a protein, but it’s unlike the other