Was eine gute Sauce ausmacht

What makes a good sauce

What makes a good sauce!

The challenge of making not just a good sauce, but a perfect one
Oliver Dewet Schmidt

A search for clues by Oliver D. Schmidt

"Ahhh, that's delicious! And that sauce… mmmmhhh!”
This brief comment - and the connoisseur's face glowing at the same time - says it all! Who doesn't rejoice in such praise? You always get everything right somehow, but the perfect sauce is a challenge.
A sauce plays with sweetness, acidity, spiciness and much more.
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Tagliatelle with truffle sauce and fresh truffles
Homemade spaghetti with truffle sauce
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The sauce with the sophisticated trick is the connecting element of a dish - and is greatly appreciated by everyone when it's a success. Strictly speaking, everything is easy once you know how to do it. But there is a lot to consider: the sauce has to have the right texture, and the play with sweetness, acidity and spiciness needs to be perfectly balanced. The sauce must not separate. The sauce should be understandable, but at the same time have this interesting unknown. The aroma should combine the individual components of the dish into a perfect whole - here you can quickly underestimate the challenge of preparing it.

Grashoff's truffle sauce

truffle sauce

The difference between "sauce" and "gravy" is not just a linguistic one.

Now you can get some help here, but you just have to be careful for a moment, because “sauce” and “souse” are not only two different things in spelling. It is a different association, a different culinary world that opens up there: Strictly speaking, the German “Sossen” are rather heavy, more generally held liquids held together with roux or compact binding agent. Of course, they always work somehow, but sometimes they also lack the important “esprit”, often also the lightness and sophistication. The connoisseurs of the Romanic peoples north of the Mediterranean have developed something more elegant.

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"It's better to have a good sauce at home when you don't need it than not to have a good sauce at home when you need it."

Lobster with lobster sauce

Fresh lobster with lobster sauce

Grashoff's lobster sauce

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A red wine base sauce with an aroma kick

Coq au Vin
Coq au Vin de Bordeaux
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The red wine base sauce that flows around the "Coq au Vin" presents itself as quite different from the perfect sauce: it is a delicious liquid from French cuisine. An important ingredient is roasted vegetables, which, after roasting, are poured over with red wine and cooked. It is then passed through a sieve, giving the sauce an aromatic, natural bond. Just before serving, it's worth reducing some aromatic red wine (such as the "Banyuls" from the French department of Pyrènées-Orientales or a smooth red port wine) and then enriching this with the red wine base sauce until the desired texture is achieved is. This is how this sauce gets exactly that aroma kick.
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The core of the perfect sauce should be simple

In our bistro we have been serving a mustard sauce with our steamed haddock, one of Grashoff's signature dishes, since 1973. Of course, the sauce is freshly prepared every day. At its core it is quite simple. And yet it's the little things that make the difference.
Guests came to our bistro in Bremen from Osnabrück and Hamburg just to eat our haddock in mustard sauce.
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Steamed fillet of haddock with mustard yoghurt sauce and dill potatoes
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At the request of many guests, we tried for a long time to get this mustard sauce in a jar. That didn't work properly: it separated, couldn't be pasteurized - and, above all, very quickly lost its fresh, sharp mustard aroma. To date we have not been able to solve the problem, but our Hollandaise sauce mixed with a little hot mustard is a fairly equivalent substitute.


We got a large number of other fresh sauces that we use in our bistro in jars so that we can offer them to you in our online shop. The selection is quite extensive and makes it easier for you, for example, to conjure up “Fresh lobster with lobster sauce and spaghetti ”, a “veal stew with veal dumplings, asparagus and morels in morel sauce ” or a “parmesan risotto with parmesan sauce”, just the way you like it never been able to enjoy! The sauces can be stored in the refrigerator for several weeks, so you can stock up.

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