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Sauce

Devilled Butter

A butter-based sauce with vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, cayenne pepper, mustard, and egg yolk, served with seafood.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and mustard 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 ↓

Devilled Butter

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the butter, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, salt, cayenne pepper, ground mustard, and egg yolk until well combined.

  2. Serve with devilled crabs, lobsters, or other seafood.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Sauce + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 fat and richness, giving the mixture a soft, spreadable body.
Egg yolk
Emulsifies the butter with the liquids so the mixture stays smooth and creamy.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the butter.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury depth and a tangy background note.
Ground mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that gives the spread its bite.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat that gives the spread its devilled character.

The step that matters

Mix until well combined. The egg yolk can only emulsify the butter and liquids properly when they are fully blended. Thorough mixing spreads the yolk evenly, so the result is smooth and uniform rather than greasy or streaked with separated fat.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Horseradishfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, vinegar, sauce, pepper, egg. 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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