Word.ws English Dictionary

mother sauces

mother sauces is the plural of mother sauce.

Meaning of mother sauce

Noun

mother sauce (plural mother sauces)

  1. A basic sauce from which many further sauces can be derived by making minor changes or additions to the ingredients; singular of mother sauces.

Noun

mother sauces pl (normally plural, singular mother sauce)

  1. (plural, plural-normally) The set of 5 sauces that are the basis of traditional French cuisine.
    • “The problem with the classic mother sauces,” according to the chef Michael Solomonov, who cooks modern Israeli food at his restaurant Zahav in Philadelphia, “is that most of them are made with roux. Now, roux is out. Nobody uses it, except when you’re making macaroni and cheese.”2016 August 2, Samin Nosrat, “Five Sauces for the Modern Cook”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 05 Aug 2016

Forms of mother sauces

singularmother sauce

Origin of mother sauces

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

Sauces considered mother sauces. In order (left to right, top to bottom): béchamel, espagnole, tomato, velouté and hollandaise. Calque of French sauces mères, coined by Marie-Antoine Carême, popularized by Auguste Escoffier.

Questions about mother sauces

What does mother sauces mean?
Mother sauces means the set of 5 sauces that are the basis of traditional French cuisine.
What is mother sauces the plural of?
Mother sauces is the plural of mother sauce.
What part of speech is mother sauces?
Mother sauces is a noun.

Words near mother sauces in the dictionary

  1. mother of vinegar
  2. mother plant
  3. mother plants
  4. Mother Russia
  5. mother sauce
  6. mother sauces
  7. mother ship
  8. mother ships
  9. mother superior
  10. mother superiors
  11. Mother Teresa

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mother sauces (page history and authors); mother sauce (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-mother sauces.wav.

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