"It was an epiphany," he says of the time he slathered Cool Ranch dressing on a salad and identified that taste with one of his basic food groups -- Cool Ranch Doritos.

He was 18 then, a waiter at Pizzeria Uno in suburban Washington, D.C.

"At that moment I realized that food is more than a rote activity you do three times a day," says the former Duke University research lab manager turned hustling entrepreneur and father of a 10-month-old son.

Since May, his 1-year-old start-up company, Headstart Gourmet, has sold almost 1,000, four-ounce cups of his compound butter sauces at six Triangle food retailers and one in Duluth, Ga. The sauces can be used as a dressing, finishing sauce, spread or dip. Food critics have praised the white wine, red wine and orange Creole compound butter sauces.

"I'm encouraged," says Stemmle, 31, who quit his job at Duke in November 2005 to concentrate on his sauces. "A year ago I would have been discouraged."

The first big break came May 15 when his sauces appeared on the shelves of the Triangle's four Whole Foods stores. The Headstart line is sold at Parker and Otis and A Southern Season in Chapel Hill, as well. The butter-based sauces can't be purchased via the Internet, but Stemmle's Web site, www.headstartgourmet.com, got about 6,000 hits in the two days immediately following a positive review in late July.

Stemmle and his wife, Laura, a post-doctoral researcher in pathology at Duke University, figure they have finally broken into the black and no longer need to dip into their savings.

To pump his sauces into the health food mainstream, he holds store demonstrations, touts them on his Web site through recipes and cooking videos, and maneuvers to place the sauces in all 15 Whole Foods stores in North and South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama, as well as other grocers.

When demand dictates, Stemmle hits the road at 5 a.m. for Asheville, where he rents an artesinal kitchen for 16 hours at Blue Ridge Food Ventures to brew his sauces.

The return trip to his Trinity Park home makes for a 23-hour day, which he has done five times this year. A distributor parcels out the sauces to stores.

About 10 years ago, Stemmle took to the stove and began mimicking the menu offerings he served during his shifts at Durham's high-end Four Square Restaurant.

His breakthrough occurred in April 2005 at a party celebrating the completion of his wife's Ph.D. in biochemistry at Duke. His mother-in-law asked him to make a sauce for the salmon. The sauce he fashioned from butter, shallots, white wine and a few herbs drew applause.

The praise pushed Stemmle deeper into the kitchen.

He came up with three compound butter sauces: white wine with butter, lemon, thyme and garlic; red wine with butter, raspberry, honey and mustard; and orange Creole, a reduction of orange juice with butter and Creole spices.

"This is innovative," Stemmle says of the method and result. "No other company is doing this." A patent is pending.

One great strength of the sauces, he says, is that they can "turn something simple into something fancy very quickly."

Stemmle rattles through the challenges with enthusiasm, information and self-deprecating humor.

On his childhood indifference to the kitchen: "Don't get me wrong, I was a very helpful young man."

On the two demonstrations posted on his Headstart Gourmet Web site: "I'm very charming and entertaining on the video, by the way."

And on the simple, natural ingredients in his sauces: "It doesn't read like a chemistry experiment."

At first, Stemmle confesses, he had a narrow view of the uses of his sauces.

When a friend said he liked the white wine sauce on English muffins, "I was offended."

He has loosened up ... a lot. Recently he was amused to hear that the white wine sauce was drizzled over popcorn.

"That one goes on a lot of different things," he says.