Sauces may be used for sweet or savory dishes. They may be prepared and served cold, like mayonnaise, prepared cold but served lukewarm like pesto, cooked and served warm like béchamel or cooked and served cold like apple sauce. They may be freshly prepared by the cook, especially 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.

Possibly the oldest recorded European sauce is garum, the fish sauce used by the Ancient Romans, while doubanjiang, the Chinese soy bean paste is mentioned in Rites of Zhou 20 (c. 130 BCE). The 4th century CE De Re Coquinaria, a late Latin manuscript details a large number of ancient Roman sauces. The 12th Century Forme of Cury details a number of medieval sauces.

In French cuisine, the mother sauces (French: sauces mères), also known as grandes sauces in French, are a group of sauces upon which many other sauces — 'daughter sauces' or petites sauces — are based. Different sets and classifications of mother sauces have been proposed since at least the early 19th century.

The most common list of mother sauces in current use is attributed to chef Auguste Escoffier and based on his seminal cookery book Le guide culinaire:
Béchamel sauce: White sauce, based on milk thickened with a white roux.
Espagnole sauce: Brown sauce based on a brown stock reduction, and thickened with a brown roux. Ingredients typically include roasted bones, bacon, and tomato (puréed or fresh).
Tomato sauce (sometimes Tomate or Tomat): As well as tomatoes, ingredients typically include carrots, onion, garlic, butter, and flour, plus pork belly and veal broth.
Velouté sauce: Light coloured sauce, made by reducing clear stock (made from un-roasted bones) and thickened with a white roux. Velouté is French for "velvety".
Hollandaise sauce: Warm emulsion of egg yolk, melted butter, and lemon juice or vinegar.

The original French editions of Le guide culinaire did not include Hollandaise as a grande sauce, but separately described mayonnaise — a cold emulsion of egg yolk with oil and vinegar—as a mother sauce for cold sauces; this was not included in the English edition.

Sauces are very extensive and include those sauces such as soy sauce, hot pepper sauces and Worcestershire sauces used to flavour other dishes. You have sauces such as gravies and sweet custards that are intended to be poured over other dishes. You have dipping sauces often used to accompany starters and snacks. There are also salsas, which, by definition are sauces (the same would be true of fresh Indian chatnis). Ketchups, derived from Indonesian Catsups are also sauces, as are various salad dressings.