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Sauce Crebilly

A sauce made with eggs, pickles, vinegar, mustard, onions, cayenne, parsley, pepper, and salt, served with white fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Hamilton, Margaret · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 9,259 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sauce Crebilly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Separate the yolks of 2 eggs. Add 1 dessertspoonful of mixed pickles, 3 tablespoons of best Lucca, and 1 saltspoonful of salt.

  2. Add 1 teaspoonful of fine sugar.

  3. Add 1 tablespoonful of vinegar and 1 saltspoonful of mustard.

  4. Add 1 teaspoonful of chopped onion and 1 saltspoonful of cayenne.

  5. Add 1 teaspoonful of chopped parsley and 1 saltspoonful of white pepper.

  6. Blend yolks with all dry ingredients; stir in oil very slowly; add last of all vinegar.

Serve

  1. Serve with any white fish, boiled, baked, or fried.

By Hamilton, Margaret. 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. See the original page.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and thicken the sauce into a smooth, rich body.
Oil (in the method)
Forms the bulk of the emulsion, giving the sauce its richness and body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps balance the richness of the oil.
Mustard
Adds pungency and helps stabilise the emulsion.

The step that matters

Stir in the oil very slowly. Oil must be added gradually to the yolks so each droplet is coated and dispersed. Adding it too fast breaks the emulsion, so the sauce separates and turns greasy instead of thick and smooth.

Flavor stand-ins for the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, vinegar, mustard, onion, parsley, egg):

  1. Capersbetter flavor fit
  2. Tarragonbetter flavor fit
  3. Dillbetter flavor fit
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, mustard, onion, parsley, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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