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Sauce

To Make Dutch Sauce

A sauce made with butter, water, flour, anchovies, vinegar, and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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To Make Dutch Sauce

Why it works: Flour and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 743 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Make Dutch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add water and a little flour, stirring to combine.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix in the chopped anchovies, vinegar, and horseradish.

  2. Boil the mixture together and serve immediately.

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. Flour + horseradishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Flour + vinegartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,652 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Provides richness and a smooth, rounded body to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the sauce coats the back of a spoon.
Anchovies
Adds a savory depth that gives the sauce its character.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and cuts through the butter.
Horseradish
Contributes a sharp, pungent aroma and bite.

The step that matters

Add water and flour together, stirring to combine. Flour added to hot fat can clump if it is not fully stirred into the liquid. Blending it smoothly into the water first keeps the sauce even and lump-free.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, vinegar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, vinegar. 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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