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Sauce Piquante

A French sauce made from parsley, egg yolks, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, stock, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Sauce Piquante

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rub the chopped parsley into a paste.

  2. Gradually add the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs while rubbing continuously.

  3. Mix in the dry mustard and Worcestershire sauce until smooth.

  4. Stir in the stock or warm water and heat until it boils.

  5. Add the salt and a dash of pepper, then serve.

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. Parsley + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Parsley + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 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

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Emulsify and thicken the sauce into a smooth, rich base.
Dry mustard
Adds sharp pungency that cuts through the richness of the yolks.
Worcestershire sauce
Contributes savory, acidic depth to the sauce.
Chopped parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma and a green flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the yolks gradually while rubbing. Adding yolks all at once can leave lumps, since the yolk fats need to be worked into the parsley paste slowly to form a smooth, stable emulsion.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, egg, sauce, 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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