it was in Europe, more precisely in France,
that generations of cooks developed sauce
making into a systematic art, and made it the
heart of a national cuisine that became an
international standard.
Ancient Times
Our first real knowledge of sauce-like
preparations in Europe comes from Roman
times. A Latin poem from around 25 CE
describes a peasant farmer making a spread of
pounded herbs, cheese, oil, and vinegar — an
ancestor of pesto genovese — that gave a
pungent, salty, aromatic savor to his flatbread
(see box, p. 583).
A few centuries later, the Latin recipe book
attributed to Apicius makes it clear that
sauces played an essential part in the dining of
the Roman elite. More than a quarter of the
nearly 500 recipes are for sauces, the term for
which was ius, the ancestor of our “juice.”