They are core essentials for the Western cooking tradition codified by Escoffier. The Indic tradition is different (and North India is quite different from South). There are at least four major groups of African traditions. I am being profoundly ignorant by referring to the Asian tradition - Northern Chinese is wheat-centered and Southern is rice-centered, and Thai flavors are quire different from Viet not to mention Malay...z
And none of them use the mother sauces except the Western tradition.
Humans have great diversity in food, and that is wonderful.
Re:Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking
by mattkrause on Friday July 29, 2022 @11:22AM
(#32278110)
Not those mother sauces, and not by that particular name, but Indian cuisines do have the same "variations on a theme" structure.
A lot of North Indian dishes start with a base of tomato, onions, ginger, and garlic, to which various things are subsequently added. I think you could call that a "mother sauce", and people occasionally do: https://food52.com/blog/19216-does-indian-cuisine-have-mothe...
And also, if you look at the best cooking schools in the US such as Auguste Escoffier they also start with lessons on Italian and French cooking because of its influence on so many other cuisines.
This stuff is like learning variables and functions in programming - they're just core essentials and if you want to learn cooking, as you'd expect from an app-based course on cooking, you'd expect these to be early topics :)
Of course we're getting off track here because I was originally just joking with the OP as mentioned in another comment and seen in their reply. The Italians are stereotypically very protective of traditional cooking recipes (watch almost any Italian chef on youtube make a dish).