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Vinaigrette Sauce with Egg

A vinaigrette sauce made with a hard‑boiled egg yolk, oil, vinegar, shallot, chives, salt, pepper, and optional cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 450 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Vinaigrette Sauce with Egg

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mash the yolk of the hard-boiled egg in a bowl.

  2. Add the oil, vinegar, chopped shallot, chives, salt, black pepper, and cayenne pepper, then mix well until smooth and combined.

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. Shallot + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Chive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + shallottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 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

Hard-boiled egg yolk
Mashed to a paste, it thickens the dressing and gives it a creamy body.
Oil
Provides fat that carries flavor and gives the dressing its smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the oil and yolk.
Shallot
Adds sharp, savory aroma and a mild onion flavor to the dressing.

Swap the chive

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

  1. Mustardfits about as well
  2. Chivethe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Horseradishfits less well

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