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Sauce

Mustard Sauce for Lettuce or Cabbage

A mustard-based sauce made with sugar, butter, egg yolk, and vinegar, served over lettuce or cabbage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mustard Sauce for Lettuce or Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix the sugar, mustard, salt, pepper, butter, and egg yolk.

  2. Add vinegar gradually until the mixture reaches a desired consistency.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a saucepan and heat until it comes to a boil.

  4. Stir in the well-beaten eggs and cook, stirring briskly, until thickened.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over finely chopped cabbage or lettuce before serving.

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.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mustard + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the sauce as they cook, giving it a creamy, coating body.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and emulsifies the butter and mustard into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, making the sauce smooth and mellow.
Prepared mustard
Provides sharp, pungent flavor that defines the sauce.
White sugar
Balances the sharpness of the mustard and vinegar with sweetness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and cuts the richness.

The step that matters

Cooking the beaten eggs. Stirring the beaten eggs into a hot mixture and cooking them briskly keeps the sauce smooth while the egg proteins set and thicken it. If the heat is too high or stirring stops, the eggs can scramble and leave lumps.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Sesamefits about as well
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, mustard, pepper, butter, egg, 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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