Page:Escoffier - A Guide to Modern Cookery.djvu/28

2 whatsoever to the chef concerning his work, for, let the talent or merits of the latter be what they may, they are crippled by insufficient or inferior material. It is just as absurd to exact excellent cooking from a chef whom one provides with defective or scanty goods, as to hope to obtain wine from a bottled decoction of logwood.

The principal kinds of fonds de cuisine are:—

1. Ordinary and clarified consommés.

2. The brown stock or "estouffade," game stocks, the bases of thickened gravies and of brown sauces.

3. White stock, basis of white sauces.

4. Fish stock.

5. The various essences of poultry, game, fish, &c., the complements of small sauces.

6. The various glazes: for meat, game, and poultry.

7. The basic sauces: Espagnole, Velouté, Béchamel, Tomato, and Hollandaise.

8. The savoury jellies or aspics of old-fashioned cooking.

To these kinds of stock, which, in short, represent the buttresses of the culinary edifice, must now be added the following preparations, which are, in a measure, the auxiliaries of the above:—

1. The roux, the cohering element in sauces.

2. The "Mirepoix" and "Matignon" aromatic and flavouring elements.

3. The "Court-Bouillon" and the "Blancs."

4. The various stuffings.

5. The marinades.

6. The various garnishes for soups, for relevés, for entrées, &c. ("Duxelle," "Duchesse," "Dauphine,"Pâte à choux, frying batters, various Salpicons, Profiteroles, Royales Œufs filés, Diablotins, Pastes, &c.).

1—ORDINARY OR WHITE CONSOMMÉ