Skip to main content
Sauce

Dutch Sauce

A sauce made with butter, egg yolks, flour, and lemon juice or vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Dutch Sauce

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Dutch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In an earthenware pot or bain-marie, combine the butter, egg yolks, flour, and lemon juice or vinegar.

  2. Gently heat the mixture, stirring constantly to prevent curdling. Do not allow the sauce to boil.

Serve

  1. Add a few drops of vinegar just before serving if desired.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and bind it into a smooth emulsion as they gently cook.
Butter
Provides fat for a rich, smooth texture and body in the sauce.
Flour
Helps stabilize the emulsion and adds body so the sauce holds together.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and egg flavour.

The step that matters

Gently heat the mixture without boiling. Egg yolks begin to set at moderate heat and can curdle or scramble if overheated. Constant stirring and avoiding boiling keep the sauce smooth and emulsified.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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

You might also like

Hot Lemon Cream SauceHot Lemon Cream Sauce11 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes