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Sauce

Butch Sauce

A sauce made from egg yolks, salt, olive oil, vinegar, pepper, and parsley, thickened by double boiling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Butch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the egg yolks, salt, olive oil, and vinegar in a small saucepan.

  2. Place the small saucepan in a larger saucepan filled with hot water.

  3. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens.

  4. Remove from heat and stir 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  4. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify and thicken the sauce as they cook, giving it a creamy body.
Olive oil
Adds fat for richness and helps form a smooth emulsion with the yolks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the richness of the yolks and oil.

The step that matters

Cooking over gentle hot water. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but too much heat scrambles them into lumps. Setting the small pan inside hot water and stirring constantly keeps the heat gentle and even, so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Dillfits about as well
  4. Garlicfits less well

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