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Sauce

Sauce Taetaee

A mustard‑egg yolk sauce with olive oil, vinegar, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sauce Taetaee

Ingredients

Directions

Make the emulsion

  1. In a bowl, mix mustard, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Add the egg yolks (unbeaten) and stir until well combined.

  3. Gradually add the olive oil, starting with a few drops and beating constantly.

  4. As the mixture thickens, thin it with vinegar, then add lemon juice.

Chill and finish

  1. Chill thoroughly.

  2. Just before serving, stir in the olives, onion juice, pickles, parsley, capers, and lemon juice.

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 + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Act as the emulsifier that holds the oil and vinegar together as a thick sauce.
Olive oil
Forms the body of the sauce as it is beaten into the yolks, giving richness and fat.
Mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds sharpness to the sauce.
Vinegar
Thins the thickening sauce and adds acidity that balances the rich oil.
Capers
Add briny acidity and a sharp, savoury bite to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the olive oil. Oil must be added slowly, starting drop by drop and beating constantly, so the yolks can take it up into an emulsion. Adding it too fast makes the sauce split and separate into oil and liquid.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, egg, olive, pepper, vinegar, parsley, capers. 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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