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Sauce

Dutch Sauce

A sauce made with butter, cream, egg yolks, tarragon vinegar, pepper, salt, and mustard, thickened by cooking over a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Dutch Sauce

Why it works: Tarragon and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 901 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Dutch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a basin.

  2. Add the cream, egg yolks, tarragon vinegar, pepper, salt, and mustard.

  3. Place the basin in a pan of boiling water on the stove.

  4. Beat the mixture over the heat until it thickens and becomes creamy.

  5. If the sauce curdles, add 2 more egg yolks.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Tarragon + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify and thicken the sauce as they set with gentle heat.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that gives the sauce a smooth, silky body.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness, diluting the yolks so the sauce stays smooth.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and sharpens its flavour.

The step that matters

Beat over gentle heat until thickened. Egg yolks thicken when warmed slowly over gentle, indirect heat. Too much heat scrambles them, causing the sauce to curdle, which is why the basin sits over boiling water and the mixture must be beaten constantly.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, cream, egg, tarragon, vinegar, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, egg, tarragon, vinegar, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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