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Sauce

Red Mullet, Sauce for

A sauce made from hard‑boiled egg yolks, clarified butter, mustard, flour, vinegar or lemon juice, pepper, salt, cold water, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Red Mullet, Sauce for

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Rub the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs to a paste.

  2. Mix in the clarified butter, mustard, flour, vinegar or lemon juice, pepper, and salt.

  3. Add the cold water and stir until combined.

  4. Pour the mixture into a saucepan and stir over heat until it boils.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the finely shredded parsley, let the sauce boil once more, and serve.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Emulsify the butter and water, giving the sauce body and a smooth, rich texture.
Clarified butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and yolk.

The step that matters

Stirring over heat until it boils. Flour starches thicken only once heated to boiling, and stirring keeps the mixture smooth and prevents lumps or scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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