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Sauce

Taetae Sauce

A vinaigrette-like sauce made with olive oil, vinegar, mustard, capers, pickle, onion juice, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Taetae Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine olive oil, vinegar, mustard, salt, and pepper.

  2. Add onion juice, minced capers, minced pickle, and egg yolk.

  3. Whisk until well blended and smooth.

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 + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Emulsifies the oil and vinegar so the sauce stays smooth and thick.
Olive oil
Provides fat and body, giving the sauce its rich mouthfeel.
Mustard
Helps emulsify the sauce and adds a sharp, pungent flavor.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Whisk until well blended and smooth. The oil must be dispersed into the egg yolk and acid gradually and thoroughly. Whisking breaks the oil into tiny droplets held in suspension by the yolk's lecithin, so the sauce thickens and does not separate.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, vinegar, mustard, pepper, capers, 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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