Once upon a time in America, a fish or vegetable in cream sauce was regarded as a talisman of sophisticated cooking. Lots of butter improved the cream sauce, and an egg yolk enrichment further elevated the creation into upper reaches of haute cuisine.

In 1957 Peggy Harvey took an early shot across the bow of flour-based sauces in general. In her book Season to Taste, she presented a two-fold case against them. She primarily objected to the long boiling time required to rid a sauce of its raw flour taste, but she also noted that even a fully cooked flour-based sauce did not provide the ultimate in taste.

As to the objection to long cooking, Julia Child provided a respite for flour-based sauces with her introduction of the cooked roux. She told us how to sauté the flour for a few minutes in butter, thus removing the raw taste of flour, before stirring the flour and butter together into cream or other liquid.

This was not enough, however, for the new chefs of the 1980s. Paul Bertolli, author with Alice Waters of Chez Panisse Cooking, articulated the new thinking:

In my mind all sauces fall into two categories: those that are developed apart from, or are substantially unrelated to, the food they accompany, such as the butter-and egg-based sauces - hollandaise, bearnaise, beurre blanc, and flour-based sauces; and sauces that are derived directly from the food during the cooking process.

His preference is clearly for the latter, as he largely ignores the former, as do his contemporaries. Today white sauce is seldom encountered in quality restaurants. Like the Soviet Union, the Great White Sauce Empire seems to have collapsed without a fight.

Today things might have gone too far.

As early as 1974 Richard Olney protested the "fashionable distaste for flour-bound sauces." His first point was that such sauces, as in a gratin of leftovers with cheese and bread crumbs, can be of an "exemplary goodness." Then, he noted that many people have pleasurable childhood memories of such sauces.

The latter speaks to me with particular force. In browsing cookbooks, I have been struck at the number of writers, whose opinions we most respect, who declare that their enthusiasm for food began in childhood experiences. An impression persists that the most satisfying enjoyment of food, for all of us, comes from development and elaboration of childhood tastes, not avoiding them because of one fashion or another.

That said, for the most part sauces in this chapter, and elsewhere in the book, are neither egg-based nor flour-based. Some are "naturally" thickened with tomato puree or sauce, mustard, thick yogurt cream. Others, such as vinaigrettes, are not thickened at all.

Many are in accordance with Paul Bertolli’s concept, deriving from meat juices or a vegetable broth created during the cooking process. Such are pan sauce for lamb roast, and thickened yogurt cream infused with roast chicken juices.

Most, however, involve much simpler cooking processes than Bertolli has in mind, and are erected on the solid intellectual edifice of apple pie. Neither apples nor crust are derived from the other. They exist independently offering a contrast in texture and agreeable mixture of flavors.

So with sauces here. Red pepper sauce may be used for salmon or stirred into pasta, vinaigrette (increasingly regarded as a sauce by San Francisco restaurants) will coat green beans; cumin-flavored thick yogurt cream will make a spinach raita, lemon balsamic mustard is used for broccoli, and so on.

A subtle balance is important. Generally a meat or vegetable should not be overwhelmed by its sauce, unless it deserves to be. Such is the case of thoroughly dried out, post-Thanksgiving turkey breast, which needs to be shrouded in a thick sauce. See "In Memoriam" in the turkey section.

Arrowroot Preferred

Where an "artificial" thickening is required, I generally prefer arrowroot. If not available locally, it may be ordered from the Penzey catalogue. (See Shopping Sources.)

Peggy Harvey gave reasons for selecting arrowroot over flour. These are as valid now as then: instant thickening with no raw flavor, more concentrated flavor as less is used, clarity and sheen in appearance.

The only negative thing I have heard about arrowroot is its tendency, when standing, to form a few little gelatinous nodules on the bottom of the pan. If this should be objectionable, it can be prevented by thickening at the last minute, or straining the sauce, which some cooks do anyway.

Cornstarch is another possibility, but has a raw taste that requires 10 minutes to disappear.

Flour is used rarely in this book as it dilutes the taste. (Escoffier observed that only the starch in the flour thickens, the rest is baggage.) A flour-based sauce too easily becomes the meal itself, not generally the most pleasing for us today.