In the 19th Century, French chef Marie Antoine-Carême was the first to organize all the French sauces into groups that were based on four foundational sauces. Later, French chef Auguste Escoffier revised the list and added one more, so that there were now five "mother sauces," which he codified in recipe form in Le Guide Culinaire in 1903. Every classically trained chef can make them by rote, because hundreds if not thousands of sauces are really just these five sauces with other ingredients added to them. Home cooks use them too - if you've made Macaroni & Cheese from scratch, you started with a béchamel. This is a list of the 5 Mother Sauces: Béchamel, Velouté, Espagnole, Hollandaise, and Tomato, and some of the more common and classic examples of sauces based on them.
