The Sauciest

Cooking...It's a science, it's an art, it's a skill and a talent necessary for life.  Or at least, it's necessary for the lifestyle and continued happiness of a foodie like me.  And if you're a foodie like me, you'll understand that it's sauce that makes the culinary world go around.  I know I'm not alone in my thinking - in fact, back in the 18whenevers, some French guy classified all of the known sauces into four categories, known as the Grandes Sauces, or mother sauces (hey, I never claimed that cooking was a history).  These days, the list has grown just a bit...however, if you're a chef worth your salt, you ought to know how to execute these; believe me, with minor modifications, they'll get you a long way.  And if you botch the technique, you'll end up with a mess on your hands that no amount of fancy ingredients will be able to fix.  So enough of that 'hunger is the best sauce' nonsense...without further ado, I give you...

The Mother Sauces

• Bechamel: this white sauce, arguably the king of the great sauces, with a little sleight of hand, can be eaten in anything from lasagna to moussaka to All-American macaroni and cheese.  The traditional ingredients include milk, onion, salt, and other spices such as nutmeg, bay, or clove, but the backbone of this first sauce is the roux.  A roux is just a fancy term that refers to a mixture of equal parts butter and flour.  Depending on the length of time the roux is cooked, the color and flavor range in intensity from white to blond to brown.  Now, the trick to a bechamel is simply: patience.  Careful whisking,  slow and moderated addition of ingredients, and low heat if necessary are what make the difference between burnt, greasy, gloopy sludge and creamy deliciousness.
• Velloute: the word velloute essentially means 'velvety', and to accomplish this simple sauce a white or blond roux that, instead of milk, contains chicken or fish stock.  In the essential recipe, no spices are called for, but the wide variety of secondary sauces can be created by adding wine, mushrooms, shallots, or the reduced glazes from meat, among other things.
• Allemande: this sauce, while separated out by the original sauce-namer, is something of a modified velloute.  It is distinguished, however, by a liason, an egg yolk-and-cream mixture which further thickens and increases richness of the aforementioned velloute.  Lemon juice is also often added to round off this sauce.  Now that we can accomplish a lump-free roux, the trick to the allemande is adding the emulsifying egg mixture back into a hot broth without scrambling.  This is done by what's known as tempering: a very small amount of hot veloute is added to the liason mixture and worked in so that the temperatures of the two liquids can be reconciled.  This is repeated until about a third of the veloute is added before the sauce is mixed together.
  
• Espagnole: a multitude of hearty recipes can be derived from this stock-based mother sauce; certainly don't let the name fool you into thinking this is reserved for Spanish dishes.  Here, another roux lies at the heart of the matter...only this time, a brown roux is in order.  What this means is that the butter-flour mixture is left on the heat for a more extended period so a brown color and nutty flavor are created.  Keep in mind: low heat and constant maintenance are your friends!  Once this has come together, broth or stock is added.  Traditionally this means veal, but chicken is a modern substitution; more meat, marrow, vegetables (particularly tomato), and seasoning can be added to finish this espagnole sauce.

While the classic categorization is a landmark one, there are, of course, sauces that don't quite fit into the above categories.  And so, it's only fair to briefly touch on three other (no less fussy) sauces I couldn't live without.

Honorable Mentions:

• Tomato: now I may be wrong, but this may perhaps be the most prevalent and flexible sauce of the modern world.  Tomato sauces, as is obvious, start out with tomatoes - roasted, dried, crushed, pureed, as paste, or fresh off the vine - and are thickened with anything from a reduction to a puree to, classically, a creamy roux.  They can be flavored with garlic, salt, spices, wine, or meat.  They can be served over pasta, fish, meat, vegetables, or bread.  Indeed, the list goes on...it's easy to see why I can't end this entry without making a note of the old 'pomme d'amour'. 
• Hollandaise: this one shines brightest atop eggs benedict, but I know for a fact that my mother enjoys it over steak, and from it are derived all kinds of emulsions, including the ever-useful but often-overlooked mayonnaise.  Along with roux and liason, the emulsion is a tricky beast to tame along the way to saucier status (a saucier, by the way, is a master sauce-maker).  Besides, particularly in the case of mayo, there's something about eating raw eggs that just gives people an uneasy feeling.  However, salmonella is quite unusual these days, and can be ousted from this uncooked sauce with the addition of a low-pH environment - helpfully provided by the vinegar or lemon juice added to these recipes and their derivatives.  And if you're still feeling uneasy, look for pasteurized, in-shell eggs at the grocery.  Now, back to emulsions.  To make a basic hollandaise, a fat-soluble liquid - butter - is added to a water-soluble liquid - lemon juice - so that the two miraculously do not separate.  For hollandaise, this is accomplished with egg yolks and vigorous whisking over a double boiler (to prevent scrambled eggs).  The trick is to first beat the egg into one or the other liquids and then to slowly - slowly! - drizzle in the other ingredient, incorporating it as you pour.  If, despite your best efforts, separation does occur, don't despair: simply grab another egg yolk and whisk in small portions of your now-oily mess until your emulsion has re-formed.
• Vinaigrette: after all of the finickiness of French sauce-making, it seems that perhaps adding vinaigrette to the list is a bit of an insult.  However, a simple blend of oil and vinegar (typically in a 2-or-3:1 ratio) can be used not only for dousing on salads and drizzling over bread, but also for marinating vegetables and meats and also for adding a last-minute dose of flavor to almost any food, cooked or uncooked.