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Egg Sauce

A sauce made from mashed hard‑boiled egg yolks, mustard, pepper, salt, vinegar, salad oil, and optional ketchup, served over boiled fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Egg Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mash the hard-boiled egg yolks in a bowl.

  2. Add mustard, pepper, salt, vinegar, and salad oil to the mashed yolks and mix until smooth and well combined.

  3. Stir in ketchup if desired.

  4. Serve over boiled fish.

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

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

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

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

  4. Mustard + ketchuptop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together331 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Vinegar + ketchuptop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mashed yolks form the body of the sauce and emulsify with the oil for a creamy texture.
Salad oil
Adds richness and smoothness, carrying flavor and giving the sauce a silky body.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the yolks and oil.
Mustard
Contributes sharp flavor and helps stabilize the emulsion between the yolks and oil.

The step that matters

Adding the oil and vinegar to the yolks. Mixing the oil into mashed yolks gradually and until smooth helps form a stable emulsion. If the ingredients are dumped in at once or not mixed well, the sauce can separate or look greasy and uneven.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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