Yes and no. Most home cooks on a daily basis do not need to know exactly how to make all of the mother sauces - however, I believe it is extremely important to have an understanding of the basics - which includes not only skills and techniques but base recipes to build off of. If you can pull off some amazing sauces for home made dishes, my level of respect goes way up!

I'd think that for an middle of the road home cook, at some point or another they've made a bechamel in some form or another (mac and cheese, most likely) but other than that, I doubt many use/ have heard of these. Though gentry is right- they can open up a world on new flavors to your cooking.

As a vegetarian, I don't have any use for 2 of the 5, and hollandaise is not a fave. A good bechamel, though? THat I cook often. Yes, mac and cheese, but also veggie (non-tomato) lasagnes, and a basic roux and white sauce is how I start my cream of tomato soup. And while I haven't bothered to master homemade mayonnaise, I should.

I don't think these are the "foundation" of good cooking anymore, though.

It is embarrassing how often I use bechamel.
I make mac 'n cheese at least twice a week (healthy, I know) because I can make bechamel in my sleep. It was the first thing I ever learned to cook, and no, I don't know why I didn't start with something sensible like grilled cheese.
I can't say I use Veloute very often, but I do make a fair amount of "cream of" soups, which all start with a sort of Veloute. I just rarely use it in it pure form.

I use béchamel sauce fairly often, and I make mayonnaise regularly. I think it sort of depends on what you like to eat and what you like to cook.

Bechamel is helpful to me because I like making a souffle for dinner if I don't have much in the pantry, and it's the base I use for tuna noodle casserole or cauliflower cheese (which is one of my favorite cold-weather dinners ever).

I make a garlic aioli (basically, mayonnaise with garlic) to dip roasted vegetables into. That seems like it would be sort of a one-trick pony dish that wouldn't get eaten much, but no. I make it a lot.

But those sauces aren't universally foundational, and if your go-to weeknight dinner is a curry, not knowing how to make a bechamel sauce without checking a recipe is probably moot.

I always make a veloute for my chicken pot pie, but I can never remember the name of the sauce, so thanks! It is important to know how to make these sauces, as they are relatively simple binders for many recipes. I would vote for tomato sauce being a mother!

Two tablespoons hot fat to two tablespoons flour, mix well over heat, add liquid to desired consistency.

That's 3 of your mother sauces... and I didn't have to memorize the French names, nor am I limited to those three liquids.

They also work quite fine with olive oil instead of butter.

Am I the only country boy here?
Bechamel = milk gravy, great with pork as in sausage gravy, also perfect as the comfort food gravy bread. Just what it sounds like milk gravy on top of bread.
Velouté & espagnol = pan gravy. Not as hearty as milk gravy so reserved for fancy meals like Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Hollandaise = breakfast at a restaurant.
Mayonnaise = Miracle Whip (makes best baloney sandwich) Hellman's for sandwiches day/week after Thanksgiving. Homemade is simple with a stick blender. {In tall narrow container put 1 egg and 1 egg yolk, 1 TBS best vinegar, 1tsp prepared mustard and 1 cup oil. Stick in hand blender, turn on and pull it up. Mayo/aoli.}

I'm a self-taught, trial-by-fire home cook and I feel like I've learned something just to read about these sauces. I wish I understood sauces better but just being able to categorize them in this way is helpful for me.

What I was trying to say in my earlier comment (and I think didn't say very clearly) is that every culinary tradition has its own equivalent of those mother sauces. Those sauces are basics for a certain culturally-specific way of cooking, but they're not universal basics.

I was taught BETH-V: Bechamel, Espagnol, Tomato, Hollandaise, Veloute.

Bechamel is the base of almost all cheese sauces, yes, I use it.
Espagnol is a rarity these days: closest I get to it is creole cooking which cools a roux with veggies before adding stock (e.g. crawfish etouffee)
Tomato really needs to be considered the style of any fruit or veggie pulp-based sauce. It's probably the one most people cook with on a regular basis, especially in this post-nouvelle world.
Hollandaise and its cousins we make on rare occasions, since it's so dang rich
Veloute is, to some degree, the mother of chinese brown sauce, and that's a regular in our house.

This misses a lot of sauce bases though, and I've been meaning to blog about this. What about nut- and seed- thickened sauces from India (kormas), Mexico (mole) and Spain (romesco)? What about unthickened sauces? Custards/flans? Foams? Syrups? Oils? These days, we need a bigger taxonomy, a real familly tree of sauces, of which BETH-V make up just a couple of the branches.

This is the first time I've heard the term, "mother sauce," though my mom taught me at a young age how to make bechamel (we called it "white sauce" and used it in a variety of recipes) and homemade mayonnaise. I made and ate a lot of bechamel sauce growing up, but I eat and cook differently than I did then (as does my mom). My food is much lighter now, not just for health reasons, but because that's just the turn my palate has taken over the years. Now, I usually only make bechamel (or veloute) for the occasional winter casserole, when the cold has me craving something, warm, rich and comforting.

I don't like hollandaise and I'm vegetarian (which rules out the meat broth sauces). The only one I make somewhat often -- like, once a month -- is béchamel, though I do experiment with the roux base a little more frequently.

Many people cook to sustain themselves and they're content with a boxed sauce or something from a can/jar. But I believe that it is an investment if you want to be versatile in the kitchen. Just like all kitchen skills, it will enrich your cooking experience and allow you to do more, but you can get by without it.

Saying that, once you know the basic theories about the sauces, about how the ingredients function, you can figure out how to substitute for dietary needs.

I do wonder if cooks make sauces anymore, or if they just use xanthan, VersaWhip, and agar agar?

"On Cooking" lists tomato as one of the mother sauces as well.

Also, what about buerre blanc? That's one of the simplest to assemble (although the most difficult to prepare correctly) and one of the most versatile, in my opinion.

Love it BruBro. That's exactly what I was thinking. Any country cook worth half his or her weight knows their way around roux and liquid. They'll call it gravy, not bechamel, and execute with equal skill.

I use Julia Child's recipe and instructions for velouté to make mushroom soup.

I'm right with BruBro and allisen1 -- I use all of the sauces all of the time. Besides being cheaper, it doesn't take much extra time to make a gravy from scratch.

BTW -- does anyone else get irritated at reality cooking shows like Hell's Kitchen when the supposedly "great" chefs can't name the Mother Sauces or tell Tuna from Beef? Cuz it drives me nuts.

I don't really like plain vegetables and often make an easy hollandaise, mixing most of the ingredients in the blender first. Also I use olive oil now and butter. I rewarm leftover hollandaise using my double boiler.

Béchamel is a standard for my winter casseroles, pot pies, and mac/cheese. Veloute is my basic sauce for my chicken tarragon and my goulash (the latter would have red wine & paprika). I don't like to rely on canned soups for sauces and learned early-on how to throw together some of these basic sauces. I also typically prepare my own chicken stock (in advance, stored as cubes in freezer). I'm kind of lazy and old-school at the same time.

BruBro, you've got it right!! I make gravy almost everynight. I've found I can make it from nearly ANYTHING!

When I have urbane guests I call it bechamel over polenta rather than cheesy grits.

BruBro is spot on. And if you've ever sauteed a protein that has been dredged in flour, and then finished the pan juices with butter, you've made a sort of bastardized veloute.

And just one other question...will the vegetarians please elaborate on why they feel the need to announce it in their posts?

I don't think you can just decide that mayo is a mother sauce and tomato is not. They are the cornerstone of classic cuisine and called "mother sauces' for a reason. Not up for debate.

I'm all for making things from scratch but those flour-based sauces are so heavy. I prefer to avoid gastrointestinal distress, so I have no use for them.

I do use mayonnaise occasionally and would love to try making it, but I can't find an occasion where I would be using that much within a few days. From what I've read it doesn't keep long.

Oh, and regarding the tomato sauce, I think it's silly that some people don't cook it from scratch. If you simmer canned tomatoes long enough you'll end up with a sauce that's significantly better than sauce from a jar, and what could be easier than that?

Ugh, "mother sauce" is just creepy! I've never heard the term before. And maybe if your cooking is based on the French model, but who cooks like that at home?

I think once you learn the basic sauces, you can be creative with your use (french or not) of them. Because I actually don't eat much meat, I find that roux based sauced make great casserole-type dishes, and I like a veloute for soups. I often find that these types of sauces are indeed lighter than butter-based sauces that are popular in Italian cuisine.

Vegetarians announce it because we have limited or no experience with some of the sauces.

I have a Chinese cookbook that calls for a mother sauce - essentially a concentrated stock with soy sauce in it - in which hard vegetables are first briefly boiled before being stir-fried or deep-fried. Considering how fast vegetables cook, using this sauce properly to infuse a bit of flavor without overcooking the vegetables throughout the two or three procedures must take some skill. It's a refinement I tried only once, but I imagine it's very useful in restaurant or bulk cooking.

my understanding of a velouté is that it involves a roux + stock. sure, chicken stock may be traditional, but why not use veg stock?

@avimom "...bechamel over polenta rather than cheesy grits."
in fact, you can up the urbane factor by using cheese béchamel's real name: sauce mornay :)

The naming of things! Oh my...I never even think of the names. And don't know that I have ever heard the term mother sauce more than in passing reading so that it at least feels totally new to me.

I use a béchamel frequently like most people do, for mac and cheese and a quick pasta sauce (last night I was trying to think of what the sauce would have been called when I made it with brie melted in for over ravioli) but I think the only time I really use a espagnol (other than as gravy) in my enchilada sauce.

Hollandaise is delicious but heavy and while I've made mayo to impress we don't use it much.