In cooking, a sauce is a liquid, cream, or semi-solid food, served on or used in preparing other foods. Most sauces are not consumed by themselves. Sauce is a French word taken from the Latin salsa, meaning salted; the oldest recorded European sauce is garum, the fish sauce used by the Ancient Romans. Sauces need a liquid component. Sauces are an essential element in cuisines all over the world. Sauces may be used for savory dishes, they may be prepared and served cold, like mayonnaise, prepared cold but served lukewarm like pesto and served warm like bechamel or cooked and served cold like apple sauce. They may be freshly prepared by the cook in restaurants, but today many sauces are sold premade and packaged like Worcestershire sauce, HP Sauce, soy sauce or ketchup. Sauces for salad are called salad dressing. Sauces made by deglazing a pan are called pan sauces. A chef who specializes in making sauces is called a saucier. Sauces used in traditional Japanese cuisine are based on shōyu, miso or dashi.

Ponzu, citrus-flavored soy sauce, yakitori no tare, sweetened rich soy sauce, are examples of shōyu-based sauces. Miso-based sauces include gomamiso, miso with ground sesame, amamiso, sweetened miso. In modern Japanese cuisine, the word "sauce" refers to Worcestershire sauce, introduced in the 19th century and modified to suit Japanese tastes. Tonkatsu and yakisoba sauces are based on this sauce. Japanese sauce or wasabi sauce is used on sushi and sashimi or mixed with soy sauce to make wasabi-joyu; some sauces in Chinese cuisine are soy sauce, hoisin sauce, sweet bean sauce, chili sauces, oyster sauce, sweet and sour sauce. Korean cuisine uses sauces such as doenjang, samjang and soy sauce. Southeast Asian cuisines, such as Thai and Vietnamese cuisine use fish sauce, made from fermented fish. Indian cuisines use sauces such as tomato-based sauces with varying spice combinations, tamarind sauce, coconut milk-/paste-based sauces, chutneys. There are substantial regional variations in Indian cuisine, but many sauces use a seasoned mix of onion and garlic paste as the base of various gravies and sauces.

Various cooking oils, ghee and/or cream are regular ingredients in Indian sauces. Filipino cuisine uses "toyomansi" as well as different varieties of suka, patis and banana ketchup, among others. Indonesian cuisine uses typical sauces such as kecap manis, bumbu kacang and tauco, while popular hot and spicy sauces are sambal, dabu-dabu and rica-rica. In traditional British cuisine, gravy is a sauce used on roast dinner; the sole survivor of the medieval bread-thickened sauces, bread sauce is one of the oldest sauces in British cooking. Apple sauce, mint sauce and horseradish sauce are used on meat. Redcurrant jelly, mint jelly, white sauce may be used. Salad cream is sometimes used on salads. Ketchup and brown sauce are used on fast-food type dishes. Strong English mustard is used on various foods, as is Worcestershire sauce. Custard is a popular dessert sauce. Other popular sauces include mushroom sauce, marie rose sauce, whisky sauce, Albert sauce and cheddar sauce. In contemporary British cuisine, owing to the wide diversity of British society today, there are many sauces that are of British origin but based upon the cuisine of other countries former colonies such as India.

Sauces in French cuisine date back to the Middle Ages. There were many hundreds of sauces in the culinary repertoire. In cuisine classique, sauces were a major defining characteristic of French cuisine. In the early 19th century, the chef Marie-Antoine Carême created an extensive list of sauces, many of which were original recipes, it is unknown how many sauces Carême is responsible for. The cream sauce, in its most popular form around the world, was concurrently created by another chef, Dennis Leblanc, working in the same kitchen as Carême. Carême considered the four grandes sauces to be espagnole, velouté, béchamel, from which a large variety of petites sauces could be composed. In the early 20th century, the chef Auguste Escoffier refined Carême's list of basic sauces in the four editions of his classic Le Guide Culinaire and its abridged English translation A Guide to Modern Cookery, he dropped allemande as he considered it a variation of velouté, added hollandaise and sauce tomate, defining the five fundamental "mother sauces" still used today: Sauce béchamel, milk-based sauce, thickened with flour Sauce espagnole, a fortified brown veal stock sauce, thickened with a brown roux Sauce velouté, light stock-based sauce, thickened with a roux or a liaison, a mixture of egg yolks and cream Sauce hollandaise, an emulsion of butter and lemon, using egg yolk as the emulsifier Sauce tomate, tomato-basedA sauce, derived from one of the mother sauces by augmenting with additional ingredients is sometimes called a "daughter sauce" or "secondary sauce".

Most sauces used in classical cuisine are daughter sauces. For example, béchamel can be made into Mornay by the addition of grated c

Solidago petiolaris is a North American species of goldenrod called the downy ragged goldenrod. It is native to the United States and Mexico, in every coastal state from Texas to North Carolina, inland as far as southern Illinois, southern Nebraska, northeastern New Mexico, Coahuila, its preferred habitat is sandy areas. Solidago petiolaris is a perennial herb up to 150 cm tall. One plant can produces 190 or more small yellow flower heads in late summer through fall. Photo of herbarium specimen at Missouri Botanical Garden, collected in Missouri in 1984

The National Negro Opera Company was the first African-American opera company in the United States. Organized in Pittsburgh, under the direction of Mary Cardwell Dawson, the company was launched with a performance at the local Syria Mosque; the star was La Julia Rhea, other members included Minto Cato, Carol Brice, Robert McFerrin, Lillian Evanti. During its 21-year run, NNOC mounted productions in Washington D. C. New York City, Chicago; the company disbanded in 1962 upon Dawson's death. Although the company toured nationally, its offices and studios were housed in a three-story Queen Anne-style house at 7101 Apple Street in Pittsburgh's Homewood neighborhood. Constructed as a private residence, it was purchased by William A. "Woogie" Harris in the 1930s. The NNOC moved to Washington, D. C. in 1951, but the company continued to use the third floor as a local guild office and studios until the company disbanded. In 1994 the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission designated the NNOC's house on Apple Street a historic structure.

In 2003 and again in 2013, the Young Preservationists of Pittsburgh included the building on their "Top 10" preservation opportunities. In 2007 a local newspaper reported that restoration efforts were underway, led by Jonnet Solomon-Nowlin and a nonprofit, The National Opera House. Solomon stated her organization aimed to transform the historic building into a new arts center. Altman, Susan. Encyclopedia African-American Heritage. New York: Facts on File. ISBN 0-8160-3289-0