On Food and Cooking

condiments, and sometimes artfully
intensified flavors of the primary foods
themselves, or of other foods, or of the
cooking process.
In addition to their heightened flavor,
sauces give tactile pleasure by the way they
move in the mouth. Cooks construct sauces to
have a consistency somewhere between the
resistant solidity of animal or plant tissues
and the elusive thinness of water. This is the
consistency of luscious ripe fruit that melts in
the mouth and seems to feed us willingly, and
of the fats that give a persistent, moist
fullness to animal flesh and to cream and
butter. The fluidity of a sauce allows it to coat
the solid food evenly and lend it a pleasing
moistness, while the substantial, lingering
quality helps the sauce cling to the food and to
our tongue and palate as well, prolonging the
experience of its flavor and providing a
sensation of richness.
A last pleasure that a sauce can provide is