Testing the French mother sauce that fell out of grace

A French Cooking Academy video revisits the classic French tomato mother sauce: a bacon, aromatic and blond-roux base turned into velouté, then finished with San Marzano tomatoes, thyme and bay.

Key Takeaways

The classic French tomato sauce is a velouté-based sauce with a roux and stock, distinct from fresh Italian tomato sauces.
Slow cooking, bacon and a blond roux give it a deeper, less acidic flavor profile.
Using San Marzano canned tomatoes provides a strong tomato flavor boost.
A small pinch of sugar and generous thyme help balance and season the sauce.

What the video covers

The video revisits the classic French tomato sauce (sauce tomate), one of the five French mother sauces, which has fallen out of fashion.
The sauce is contrasted with Italian-style passata: it is richer, less acidic, slow-cooked and built from multiple components.
Key ingredients include butter, bacon, onion, carrot, garlic, chicken stock, tomato paste and canned San Marzano tomatoes.
The base is a tomato-flavored roux: bacon and aromatics are cooked in butter, then flour is added and cooked on very low heat to a blond stage.
Adding stock to the roux creates a velouté, which is then enhanced with tomatoes to become a sauce tomate.
Thyme, bay leaves, a teaspoon of sugar to balance acidity, salt and black pepper are added for seasoning.
The presenter notes the traditional version takes about an hour to reach proper consistency, while a quick home version is demonstrated in roughly 30 minutes.
The sauce is used mainly in dishes other than pasta, which the video says it will cover with usage examples.

Chapters

What makes this French tomato sauce different from Italian tomato sauce?

The French version is built on a roux and stock, making it a velouté-based sauce with bacon, aromatics and multiple components. It is slow cooked and less acidic, whereas Italian-style sauces are typically made from fresh tomatoes alone.

Which tomatoes does the presenter recommend?

The presenter recommends canned San Marzano tomatoes, which he describes as the best-tasting Italian tins and a major source of real tomato flavor in the sauce.

How long should the sauce cook?

The presenter says a traditional version typically needs about an hour of slow cooking to reach the right consistency, but he demonstrates a quicker home-style version of around 30 minutes.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

Speaker A

Now, tomato sauce is a subject that's been covered to death on how to make the Italian style passata. And I thought in this video it would be a good idea not to talk about this, but instead to talk about the classic good old French tomato sauce.

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Now, this is part of the five classic mother sauces, but the classic version has been totally out of fashion, like nobody's using it.

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So, I thought perfect time.

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This is the time to revisit that recipe.

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And actually, it's kind of growing on me.

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Because it is cooked with lots of ingredients you can see there.

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Totally different flavor profile, not as acidic.

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And there is uh carrots, onion, you got garlic, you got stock, you got bacon into it.

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It is slow cooked.

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And it is used in a totally different ways, mostly not for pastas, like used for that one.

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So, in this video, I'm going to give you a recipe for a small batch on how to make that good old classic that's delicious.

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And then a few examples on how you can use it at home because it's a really worth a try.

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Let's go.

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Let's begin with the ingredients with a quick overview.

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You'll find everything in the video description, but some uh key ingredients here.

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You're going to need uh some stock, ideally a chicken stock.

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You can buy it uh from a store from a good quality or make your own.

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And we're going to be using simply tomatoes in tins.

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Now, these are the San Marzano tomatoes.

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By far, in the world of tin tomato, the best tasting Italian tomatoes uh there is.

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It's absolutely a brilliant from the rest.

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Simple ingredients, a simple pan.

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Now, let's jump on the stove.

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So, let's begin the sauce.

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Very simple.

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You can use a saucepan.

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I'm using a conical sauté pan on here.

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And we're going to start with a medium to high heat.

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I'll show you the the kind of heat that I've got here.

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And uh what we do first is, of course, to use butter.

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So, we're going to start to melt all the butter in here.

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So, a bit of a better view on here.

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The butter is melting, and we're going to start uh to make what we call a roux tomate.

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Uh so, it's a special roux a bit flavored uh with first bacon.

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So, we adding the bacon in here and we're not really coloring.

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We're just going to leave this in the butter to to cook slightly for a minute or so.

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We're not kind of searing anything.

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And then we're going to add the rest of the aromatics.

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So, as I said, very different than the classic Italian tomato sauce.

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We've got you know the the bacon in here is is getting a bit pale and I'm taking all my aromatics.

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So, onion, carrot, and a bit of garlic.

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And then same thing.

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Now, I'm just maybe 2 minutes or something like that.

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I'm going to mix everything in there.

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So, a very light coloration.

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You can see at the bottom of the pan here there's some color.

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And now we're making the roux.

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So, the roux is what?

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Is the It's basically butter and flour, but now we've got aromatics, the butter, and the flour.

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So, same concept.

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I'm reducing my heat slightly.

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So, this is what I've got here.

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Okay.

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I'm going to mix everything in here.

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And reducing to a low heat to make sure I don't burn anything.

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We want a blonde roux.

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So, blonde roux you can spend a good 3 minutes cooking on very low heat.

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And we're not adding the tomato paste now because if you were to add this now, you would not see the color of your roux.

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So, we need to judge by the color here.

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But, if you want to use time, typically 3 minutes, you'll be fine.

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So, the time is up.

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Very low heat, remember.

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Very very low.

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Look at this.

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And I I stir from time to time, not all the time.

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And uh I leave really that flour and butter to to cook like this.

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So, we get really that blonde effect.

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So, now we're making a roux tomate.

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Roux tomate means a tomato flavored roux.

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So, roux is the flour and butter.

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Well, we've got some aromatics.

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And now we add the tomato.

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So, this is tomato paste.

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Okay.

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Good amount.

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Don't worry, you'll find everything as I said in the video description for the ingredients.

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And same thing here.

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A good minute.

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We're going to cook this very gently on low heat still.

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So, my tomato flavored roux is ready.

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And now there's something quite interesting that's going to happen.

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As I said, that tomato sauce is totally different than a classic tomato sauce because here we have a roux with tomatoes.

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But, what we're going to do as the next step is to add stock.

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And if you know your mother sauces, so we start a little bit first.

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When you mix a stock with a roux, you're making a velouté sauce.

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I'm raising my heat now because we need to bring this to a boil.

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Okay?

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So, roux plus stock equal a velouté, which mean that this so-called tomato sauce is in fact a velouté sauce that is then further enhanced with fresh tomatoes and turned into a sauce tomate.

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So, it is really different to make them so when you talk about a sauce, typically in French cooking, in classic French cuisine, it is actually something that has multiple components.

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Compared to the when we say tomato sauce from an Italian perspective, it is usually all these fresh uh you know, these fresh tomatoes.

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And that's about it.

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Uh so, you can see first we're making that velouté and then we're going to add the tomatoes.

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So, I'm adding my stock a bit by bit, raising my heat, and I'm going to bring this to a very light boil.

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So, it's boiling.

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And look what I've got.

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All what I'm using here is a bit of tomato puree with the stock and roux to get almost like a velouté.

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You see the consistency?

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Kind of very thick, and I'm going to taste already.

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Mhm.

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And I can already feel the bacon, which is great.

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But, we're going further.

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When you got this base here, and now we're going to add all these tomatoes, the San Marzano.

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Because this is the big boost of real flavor of tomato that you want in that sauce.

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So, we're going to reduce this, and now it's a waiting game.

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Okay?

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When this is in, I'm going to add the final aromatics, and we're going to have to slow cook this for some time.

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At least typically it's an hour to get it to consistency, but I'm going to try to make just a a quick home style version.

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Maybe wait 30 minutes or something like that.

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Okay.

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So, let me add the aromatics in here first.

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So, you see totally different than the classic Italian tomato sauce.

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From here, it says you need quite a lot of thyme.

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You need to have a really a prominence of thyme.

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So, the thyme needs to be in there.

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We've got a few bay leaves on here.

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I'll just add a little bit.

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A teaspoon of sugar to cut off the acidity.

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And then the classic salt and pepper.

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That's what we've got.

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Don't start with too much salt because you can add some later if need be.

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And of course, some you can use white pepper, but I like to use black pepper in here.

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And that's it.

Topics:French tomato saucesauce tomatemother saucesveloutérouxSan Marzano tomatoesclassic French cookingbacontomato sauce recipeFrench cuisine

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