In classic French cooking you have five mother sauces, namely bechamel, veloute, espagnole, tomato, and hollandaise.
Then there are other sauces based on the Big Five.
One surprising sauce factoid, however, involves a man who seems to have invented a fair number of the latter sauces, these being sauce chasseur, sauce lyonnaise, sauce porto, and sauce Mornay.
The last of these sauces may share the inventor’s name because he’s said to have been Duke Philippe De Mornay, a 16th and 17th-century nobleman.
But wait, what about that whole “pope” thing?
If you’re up on your Vatican history, you’ll know that no French duke named Mornay has ever worn the pointy hat.
In the amateur saucier’s case, it was more of a nickname since in addition to serving as Governor of Saumur (which lies in the Loire Valley), he was also a noted theologian and writer who earned the moniker “Protestant pope” for his staunch anti-Catholic stance.
While his religious views eventually lost him that governorship (the French king at the time was Catholic), De Mornay’s chausseur sauce has stood the test of time and can still be found on restaurant menus from Paris to New York to Singapore. Continue reading