Skip to main content
Sauce

Cambridge Sauce

A sauce made from egg yolks, anchovy fillets, capers, herbs, mustard, oil, vinegar, cayenne, and parsley.

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

Why it works: Chervil and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cambridge Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pound together the egg yolks, anchovy fillets, capers, chervil, tarragon, and chives until a fine paste forms.

  2. Add the mustard, oil, and vinegar, mixing as you would for mayonnaise.

  3. Season with cayenne and rub the mixture through a fine sieve using a spoon.

  4. Transfer the sauce to a bowl and whisk until smooth.

  5. Finish by stirring in the chopped parsley.

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. Chervil + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Chervil + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together370 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Capers + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Capers + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Capers + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together245 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

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Form the thick base of the sauce and give it a rich, creamy body.
Oil
Adds fat that emulsifies with the yolks, giving the sauce a smooth, rich texture.
Mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds a sharp, pungent note.
Anchovy fillets
Contribute a savoury, salty depth of flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Rubbing the paste through a fine sieve. Pressing the paste through a fine sieve breaks down fibrous herb and caper pieces and smooths the yolks, so the sauce has an even, silky texture rather than a grainy one.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, anchovy, capers, chervil, tarragon, chive, vinegar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits about as well
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Beetrootfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, anchovy, capers, chervil, tarragon, chive, 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

Mixed MustardMixed Mustard9 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes