1950s Archive

Primer for Gourmets

FIRST LESSONS IN SAUCE-MAKING

Originally Published January 1958

We all know the French saying “à chacun son goût”—and les connoisseurs agree that the French have a taste for sauces. Sauce-making is the key to haute cuisine and ranks foremost among the many skills that any aspiring French cook must learn, practice, and finally master. In France, the saucier, the head sauce chef of the hotel or restaurant kitchen staff, stands second only to the executive chef himself. And any young apprenti or commisambitious to reach the top of our profession, to become an executive chef, will find that he must ascend the ladder step by step and spend ample time learning the art of the saucier. In my own quite typical case of a boy with ambitions, this rule certainly held true.

One does not walk casually into the job of the saucier.One grows into it. In the world of French chefs, saucemaking is a serious business because sauces are an essential part of so many main-course dishes. Gastronomically, the sauce has to play a double role. It must be good in itself, with fine flavor and the right consistency, and it must also enhance the food that it accompanies. As it has often been said, a well-prepared dish should be as harmonious as a happy marriage. The sauce must neither overpower nor be overpowered by the food it garnishes, but the two should pay each other charming compliments. We French believe that a well-chosen, well made sauce can turn even an uninteresting dish into quelque chose extraordinaire—something very unusual— and that a fine dish, expertly sauced, can be a true gustatory experience. This is why the saucier needs such intensive training and acquires such importance in establishments where gourmets dine.

But let me tell you of my own experience and what led me to my career. Most boys, I suppose, have a hero, someone whose footsteps they dream of following. My boyhood hero was Émile Malley, the son of my mother's best friend. He was about ten years my senior; by the time I was four or five years old, he had already left our small town to go to Moulins and learn to be a chef. His mother, a widow, ran a small épicerie, a food store, situated close by our home and we had long been good friends as well as neighbors. Madame kept us informed of Émile's progress. Whenever the postman brought a letter from him, she could hardly wait to close the shutters of the store for the night so that she might come and read it to us. I'm afraid my family listened more dutifully than eagerly to these letters, filled as they were with little else than the details of Émile's apprentissage. But I drank in every word. And looking back now, I think that perhaps Émile's ambition, confided in those letters, inspired a similar desire in me. A chacun son goût—my caste was to follow Émile and to become, like my hero, a great saucier.

In any event, I, too, at last reached the age to go to Moulins. And I, too, learned my trade at the Maison Calondre, just as Émile had done, and finally went on alone to Paris to seek my fortune, just as he had. Perhaps it was because I had been a kind of second son to Madame Malley after her Êmile left home that she enlisted his help in my behalf. And so the hero of my boyhood became the guiding spirit of my adolescence, It was Émile who put in the good word that got me into the Hotel Bristol kitchen. It was again Émile who saw that I did a good job there and suggested that I apply for a position to the chef des cuisines of the famous Paris Ritz. At that time, the Ritz had recently opened on the Place Vendôme and Émile held the coveted job of saucier there. Here, of course, was my golden opportunity.

I started my career at the Ritz as a potager, or soup chef. Soup, as you know, must cook for long, long hours, during which it requires little attention. An indifferent, lazy potager can keep out of sight and avoid other work —he has the perfect chance to be what your Army boys call a “gold brick.” But a young man who wants to get ahead makes a point of finding where he can be useful while his soup simmers undisturbed on the stove. He offers a hand to the busiest chefs and from them learns the most important lessons of our trade. Still following the trail blazed by Êmile, I usually gravitated toward the sauciers, who were particularly busy in the morning. During this part of the day they had to prepare all the sauces for the bains-marie waiting on the back of the range. By helping the saucier whenever possible, I eventually learned enough to advance from position of potager and become an assistant saucier. And Émile Malley still continued to watch over me and further my career. When César Ritz opened his London Ritz and hired Monsieur Malley as its executive chef, Êmile invited me to come as saucier, a very important post for one so young as I. There was no prouder young man in Paris the night I received that invitation.

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