The term ‘fond’ comes from the French language, and it means ‘foundation’ or ‘base’. This is an apt term, as ‘fond’ is used as the foundation of many sauces and is found at the base/bottom of your pan after cooking.
Fond is the brown bits that stick to the bottom of your pan when you are cooking. Fond does not develop well on non-stick surfaces. This stickiness isn’t a bad thing; in fact it can be quite a tasty thing. You can easily create a pan sauce by adding liquid (e.g. wine or stock) to your pan at the end of cooking, scraping up the fond, and reducing it into a sauce–a technique known as deglazing.