A Sauce for Every Lifestyle

The sauce market, like the food market in general, is fragmented according to consumers' rather specific wants and needs.

With the concern about fats, the creamy sauce market has taken hits; but lower-fat products have emerged successfully. The more recent carbohydrate consciousness similarly has brought forth low- and no-carb products in some affected categories, as well as shifts in consumer interest into sauce categories that are naturally low in carbs.

The excitement over lycopene has sparked interest in tomato-based sauces. The establishment of organic standards has legitimized the organic sauce market. Add in an increased interest in developing products for both the elderly segment and the kids' market, and there's a sauce for everybody, which means a lot of sauces and a lot of jockeying around that part of the supermarket and foodservice offerings.

Lots of products can be sauces, depending on how they are used. Campbell Soup has built an amazing business by recommending their cream soups as sauce bases. "The introduction of cream of mushroom soup in 1934 began the use of soup as a sauce, converting leftovers and small amounts of meat into main dishes," according to spokesperson Beth Jolly. "Now, we get lots of recipes from customers using the cream soups as sauces."

The most popular cream soups used in cooking are cream of chicken, cream of celery, cream of mushroom and Golden Mushroom, "but there are 34 varieties that can be used as sauce or base," she points out.

Pesto and salsa are sauces, gravies are basically sauces, and fruit sauces (essentially purees with additional ingredients) have avoided the curse of fats and carbs to become acceptable garnishes for meats. Basic types of sauces include vinaigrette, pesto, pasta sauces, mayonnaise or bearnaise types and roux (the butter and flour types), including blond roux, brown roux, bechamel and sauce Supreme.

Sauce bases and soup bases are quite similar, and often are used interchangeably. Usually, sauces include emulsions, which are either retained during cooking and serving or formulated into mixes for rehydration. Commercial sauces have several priorities, including long shelf life, acceptable levels of fat, cost control and organoleptic superiority (when compared to Aunt Grace's lumpy gravy). Add the ubiquitous requirement of food safety, and sauces and bases have become highly engineered products.

Ingredient selection

There's a lot of food chemistry that goes into sauces and bases. These products essentially are emulsions, and if they're retorted, frozen or refrigerated, they must be stabilized with starches modified to meet the processing and holding conditions. They also may contain hydrocolloids and other ingredients, cream substitutes and milk derivatives for stability, and fats recommended for resistance to oxidation.

Flavors, including cheeses, fruit ingredients and savory types, are important, of course, constantly changing and always being improved.

National Starch and Chemical Co. (www.foodstarch.com), Bridgewater, N.J., has developed a thermally inhibited starch/flour combination, which first is pH adjusted to an appropriate range, then dehydrated to an anhydrous state (less than one percent moisture), then heated to a temperature that will inhibit the swelling of the starch. The starch is unmodified, but reacts like a modified starch, providing smoothness and creaminess plus extra stability for steam stable use.

This product, called Signature Secrets, behaves much like flour in a sauce, but doesn't form a skin or separate into phases. It's being offered to foodservice operators, especially chefs, at the moment, through foodservice companies.

Another product, an expansion of the Novation line (some of which are suitable for organic foods) is Novation Prima, a freeze-thaw stable line. "Novations are considered functional native starches," says Dave Manion of National Starch's marketing department. With consumers interested in less-modified starches, the door is open for innovative science.

For sauce processors that need to replace the bodying or thickening characteristics of corn sweeteners, either for low-carb products or for natural designations, Tic Gums (www.ticgums.com), Baltimore, introduced TICaloid LC corn syrup replacer, an instantized, agglomerated gum arabic that provides texture, viscosity, and lots of soluble fiber. The product was developed for use in bars, where extra carbs are not needed but texture and water-activity reduction are.

"The technology is special, and was unexpected," notes Greg Andon, Tic business development manager. "It replaces the mouthfeel of syrups without sweetness or carbs, and maintains water activity levels. At use levels of 50-60 percent by weight of moisture, the functionality is remarkably similar to corn sweeteners. And it supplies lots of fiber with virtually no carbs."

Simplesse is a microparticulated whey derivative from CP Kelco, San Diego, originally used as a partial fat replacer in ice creams. It now functions as an ingredient to provide smooth, creamy texture a number of sauces.

Technical aspects

According to English food researchers Leatherhead Inc., understanding viscosity is only a small part of understanding what mouthfeel and texture are all about. Beginning in the 1980s, rheological characterization techniques have been used by Leatherhead to evaluate structural ingredients and food products, including flow and oscillatory rheology.