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Piquant Sauce

A sauce made with parsley, egg yolks, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, onion juice, garlic, oil, lemon juice, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Piquant Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, beat the chopped parsley into a paste.

  2. Slowly mash and mix in the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs.

  3. Add the mustard, Worcestershire sauce, onion juice, and grated garlic; stir well.

  4. Mix in the sweet oil and the strained lemon juice.

  5. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  6. Finally, add the boiling stock and mix thoroughly.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Mustard + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and bind the sauce into a smooth, thick texture.
Sweet oil
Adds fat and richness, helping the sauce feel smooth and full.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the rich yolks and oil.
Ground english mustard
Adds sharp pungency and helps stabilise the emulsion.
Boiling stock
Adds liquid that loosens the sauce to a pourable consistency.

The step that matters

Mixing in the sweet oil. Oil added too quickly or without thorough mixing can separate from the yolks, leaving a greasy, broken sauce. Adding it gradually while stirring lets the yolks form a stable emulsion.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, egg, mustard, sauce, onion, garlic, lemon):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, egg, mustard, sauce, onion, garlic, lemon. 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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