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Sauce

Lenox Sauce

A sauce made with mustard, vinegar, olive oil, eggs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,649 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Lenox Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix mustard, salt, powdered sugar, and paprika.

  2. Add the slightly beaten eggs, vinegar, and olive oil.

  3. Cook the mixture over hot water until it thickens.

  4. Strain the sauce and add the remaining ingredients.

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

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

  2. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the sauce as they cook and set, giving it body and a creamy texture.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness, helping form a smooth, emulsified sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the richness of the eggs and oil.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavor and helps stabilize the emulsion.
Melted butter
Adds fat and a rich, smooth mouthfeel to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture over hot water until it thickens. Egg proteins set gently at moderate heat. Too much heat can scramble the eggs and curdle the sauce, so cook over hot water rather than direct flame.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, vinegar, olive, sugar, butter, parsley, egg. 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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