By Piergiorgio and Amy Nicoletti

Sauces are the foundation of every cuisine—a culinary truth lusciously demonstrated in both French and Italian cooking. For centuries, the French have codified and celebrated their basic sauces—such as béchamel or sauce espagnole—though sometimes the Italians may have been the originators of these culinary achievements. There’s a kind of gravitas when French or Italian chefs talk about sauces—their preparation requires care, precision and a methodology. Making a great sauce is as much an art as a science—but, as with most aspects of cooking, the key to success is to relax and open up all your senses for a delightful experience.

Though “cream sauce” is a familiar term, it is actually an ambiguous one—and not commonly used by chefs. In Italy, “salsa cremosa” refers to any creamy sauce, and it can apply to a great variety of sauces, including those which contain fresh cream, milk, and sometimes cheese. These sauces are often thick and can be used with pasta, meat, vegetable or fish preparations. A sauce is characterized by its degree of thickness—ranging from loose or runny to a thick or dense consistency. A trick often used by cooks to thicken a sauce that is too liquid is to add burro manierato, which is butter worked with flour. It is very simply prepared by working a small piece of butter with a bit of flour—with the help of two fingers—until the mixture becomes a sort of paste. The addition of this buttery paste to any sauce will thicken it in a delightful way—making it creamy and therefore better able to stick to or coat whatever it is accompanying.

Kids the world over are notoriously crazy about any creamy food. My mother often prepared something we called carne al latte (meat with milk). First, she would pound a few thin slices of beef to tenderize them, flour them and then brown them gently in butter. Then she would add milk to the pan and cook it for a couple of minutes until the sauce became cremosa. It is one of the simpler foods to make, but for us kids, it was pure luxury.

Adding cheese, cream, milk or butter makes a sauce thicker and creamier, but it’s important to use these ingredients sparingly. The sauce should just coat the pasta; authentic Italian pasta dishes are not soupy. In northern Italian cuisine, where butter and creamy types of cheese are abundant and olive trees are scarce, cream-based sauces are much more common than in the south—but many of these northern Italian sauces are now beloved the world over.

RECIPES:

Rigatoni ai quattro formaggi (Rigatoni pasta with four cheeses)

Classic Fettuccine Alfredo

Besciamella Sauce

Pasta with Ham, Peas, and Cream

Sun Dried Tomato and Pancetta Alfredo

Gnocchi with Pesto and Cream

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