How a translation mistake changed the world's perception of a cornerstone of French cuisine

I mentioned in the introductory post that the last one in this series about the mother sauces would be a summary of what Alex calls his “thesis-level revelation” about the five (or six?) sauces, describing his sources and his conclusions.

At the beginning of the series, Alex does extensive research, quite a bit of which is at the BnF (the French equivalent of the US Library of Congress). There, he finds information that, in his mind, at least might imply (if not definitively prove) a contradiction between his materials and (not hyperbole) almost every other source available on the internet regarding the identity of the last of the five mother sauces. So, Alex emails a contact who is an expert in the history of the French cuisine. Directed by this friend to the “Larousse Gastronomique” by Prosper Montagné, a contemporary of Escoffier’s, Alex must go to the restricted section of the National Library to find a book from 1936. The “Larousse” confirms that mayonnaise, rather than Hollandaise, is the fifth mother sauce. Yes mayonnaise—the same condiment you probably have in your fridge right now—is the fifth mother sauce, and not Hollandaise, until now an undisputed classic mother sauce.

Going down one rabbit hole never ends with the exploration of just that single tunnel. Rabbit holes are rabbit holes precisely because of this: one revelation can trigger more research that leads to another breakthrough that leads to more research, and so on. And so it was for Alex, who, just as he left the Library, was reminded to check for translations in the (public) section of the Library and elsewhere on the internet. The nature of his research then changes, as Alex goes looking for English-language sources since it seems to be that nearly every English-language cooking blog or online cookbook calls Hollandaise, not Mayonnaise, the 5th sauce.

Auguste Escoffier wrote Le Guide Culinaire in 1903—and almost 110 years later, it’s still in print and remains one of the most influential cookbooks, the highest authority possible on French cuisine that both is and supports the legacy of perhaps the greatest chef ever. Four years later, as Alex finds, the English-language translation, done by a “W. Heineman” and published in London. This translation in 1907 misplaces both mayonnaise and hollandaise, putting hollandaise in the “mother sauces” section and classifying mayonnaise as a daughter. That cookbook sold well, and enough people saw it that it started being accepted. Those people taught the next generation of chefs who taught the next generation who taught the next generation who taught the next generation, and now everyone thinks hollandaise is a mother sauce because that’s how things go viral and propagate from generation to generation.

Armed with official confirmation (from the original) that the translation was incorrect, Alex set out to correct the record, creating a brand new “French Mother Sauces” Wikipedia page. However, in the year-plus since he created the page, it has been edited dozens, if not hundreds of times, some of which reverted back to the incorrect information simply because there were more sources saying the wrong thing.

I’m not here to take credit for Alex’s wonderful research or for the Wikipedia article he wrote (and had the great idea of preserving his original work on his website, which you can read here); I am simply documenting this to do what he did: try to reach as big an audience as possible to correct the record as amended by the translation from a century ago and perpetuated by almost every other online source out there, all deriving their notions of which sauces are mother sauces from that faulty translation. What you put on your sandwich is a mother sauce. What you put over your poached eggs is not.