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Sauce

Green Sauce for Ducklings or Green Geese

A green sauce made from spinach or sorrel, water, sugar, egg yolk, vinegar, and butter, whisked over low heat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Green Sauce for Ducklings or Green Geese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Bruise the spinach or sorrel in a marble mortar.

  2. Strain the juice through a tamis cloth.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the juice, sugar, egg yolk, and vinegar.

  2. If using spinach juice, add the butter.

  3. Whisk the mixture over low heat until it begins to boil.

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. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Spinach + vinegartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together866 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce as it heats and gives it a smooth, rich body.
Butter
Adds fat for a silkier texture and a richer mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Spinach or sorrel
Provides the green colour and the main herbal flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Whisk over low heat until it begins to boil. Egg yolk thickens as it warms but can scramble if overheated. Gentle, constant whisking over low heat keeps the sauce smooth and lets it thicken evenly.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

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