The most basic of the mother sauces is the bechamel. No stock, no additional ingredients, just simple store cupboard ingredients. Milk, flour and butter are all you need for a basic béchamel.

Slightly more complex than the rest, the Espagnole sauce, also sometimes called Brown Sauce. Espagnole sauce is a basic brown sauce and is one of Auguste Escoffier's five mother sauces of classic French cooking.

Very unlike a traditional sauce, Hollandaise has a silken texture, made by slowly whisking clarified butter into warm egg yolks. So the liquid here is the clarified butter and the thickening agent is the egg yolks.

Everybody knows tomatoes and tomato sauce.Traditionally, the tomate sauce was thickened with roux, and some chefs still prepare it this way. But the tomatoes themselves are enough to thicken the sauce.