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Game, Sauce Piquante for

A spicy sauce made from hard‑boiled egg yolk, salad oil, mustard, walnut ketchup, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

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 ↓

Game, Sauce Piquante for

Ingredients

Directions

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

  2. Mix in the salad oil until smooth.

  3. Add salt, pepper, mustard, walnut ketchup, and vinegar, then stir until well 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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mustard + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 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 yolk forms the thick base that emulsifies with the oil into a smooth sauce.
Salad oil
Fat that blends with the yolk to give the sauce a rich, smooth body.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharp pungency and helps the oil and yolk stay emulsified.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Mixing in the salad oil until smooth. Oil must be added gradually to the mashed yolk so it emulsifies rather than separating. Adding it too fast can break the sauce into a greasy, split texture.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Beansfits about as well
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Chestnutfits about as well

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

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