Skip to main content
Sauce

Shallot Sauce, for Tripe, Etc

A hot sauce of shallots, butter, horseradish, mustard, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Shallot Sauce, for Tripe, Etc

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine minced shallots and optional garlic with butter.

  2. Add horseradish, lemon juice, salt, cayenne, and mustard; stir over medium heat for 5 minutes.

  3. Gradually add milk and simmer for a few more minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool for 2 minutes.

  5. Stir in beaten egg yolk mixed with cream or milk; whisk over low heat for 1-2 minutes without boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve very hot.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Shallot + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Shallot + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Shallots
Soften and build a mild, sweet onion flavor as the base of the sauce.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the sauce, mellowing the sharp seasonings.
Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce gently and gives it a smooth, custard-like body when heated.
Horseradish
Provides the sharp, pungent heat that defines the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens through gentle heat. If the sauce boils, the yolk proteins can scramble and curdle, leaving the sauce grainy, so keep the heat low and whisk constantly.

Swap the garlic

The recipe marks garlic as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, butter, horseradish, lemon, pepper, mustard, milk):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, butter, horseradish, lemon, pepper, mustard, milk. 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.

More shallot sauce recipes

Mild 4 See all 22 →

You might also like

Hot Lemon Cream SauceHot Lemon Cream Sauce11 recipesMixed MustardMixed Mustard9 recipesHorseradish Cream SauceHorseradish Cream Sauce6 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipes