Velouté Sauce, the Velvet in the Kitchen

Velouté sauce is another one of the five mother sauces in the French cuisine alongside hollandaise, Espagnole, tomato sauce, and béchamel sauces. The name comes from the French velour which means velvet.

This sauce is made from a roux of butter and flour in equal amounts of mass then white stock chicken or fish stock is added to the mix.

This sauce is prepared in a similar manner to béchamel sauce. It is usually served with white meats such as fish, seafood, and poultry.

As a base for other sauces, velouté sauce is used to derive several other sauces and is rarely used without further alterations using other ingredients. These other ingredients usually give the variations of velouté their names.

Other popular sauces derived from velouté include allemande sauce, made with a few drops of lemon juice, egg yolks, and cream. Hungarian has onion, paprika, and white wine added to the ingredients. Poulette includes mushrooms, parsley, and lemon while suprême sauce includes mushroom liquor and cream and Venetian sauce has tarragon, shallots, and chervil. This is by no means an exhaustive list of derived sauces.