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Sauce

Sauce Crebilly

A creamy sauce made with egg yolks, pickles, olive oil, vinegar, and spices, served with white fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Sauce Crebilly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Blend the egg yolks with all the dry ingredients.

  2. Stir in the olive oil very slowly.

  3. Finally, add the vinegar.

Serve

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

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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.
Olive oil
Provides the fat that gives the sauce its richness and body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the oil.
Mixed pickles
Contribute tangy, sharp flavour and texture through their chopped bits.

The step that matters

Stir in the olive oil very slowly. Egg yolks can only hold oil in suspension when it is added gradually. Pouring too fast breaks the emulsion, so the sauce separates and turns oily instead of thick and smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, olive, sugar, vinegar, mustard, pepper, parsley. 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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