Sauce is one of the secret ingredients for a delicious food. For some reason, it is a requisite tool in cooking. Why is that? Basically, sauces add flavor to one food. Because of its moisture, dry foods become easier to eat and digest. Also, they make the food smell aromatic and more appetizing.
There are common sauces which are readily available in the market like soy sauce, oyster sauce, Worcestershire sauce and a lot more. These, however, are not often used alone and are made use of by combining with other ingredients to create another sauce.
The use of sauce in cooking dates back to history and where it came from cannot be fully determined. However, France is believed to be one of the catalysts of using sauce in dishes. Sauce is very important in French cuisine and it is the one that gives distinct character to France’s culinary tradition. There are more than a hundred different kinds of sauce in the French cookbook. The most common products used in making sauce are stock, egg yolk, lemon, tomatoes, wine, flour, milk and different herbs.
Asian cuisine also use sauces in their food although not as much as the Western’s. Asian sauces are runny because they do not use thickeners, unlike sauce in Europe and America that are usually condensed. For thicker sauces, corn starch and arrowroot are used. Asian sauce is as exotic as their culture. For example, Indonesian cuisine combines a lot of sambal with their food. Sambal is a kind of sauce which is made from a lot of ingredients crushed and mixed together. Also, Philippines have sauces which have extreme tastes like sinamak, which is spiced vinegar and bagoong, which is made up of fish and other salty ingredients.
Latin America also has its unique share when it comes to sauces. Unlike sauces of other cuisines, Latin American sauces are used more commonly as dips like their famous salsa which is composed of raw tomatoes, citrus juice, spicy peppers, onions, garlic and other flavorings.
Whether as a paste or just plain dip, sauces are essential in cooking different kinds of food. They not just make meals delicious, but also represent the culture of different nations.
