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Sauce

French Mustard

A sauce made from eggs, cream, butter, sugar, salt, mustard, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

French Mustard

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add the thick cream, butter, sugar, salt, and mustard; mix well.

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

  4. Slowly add the sharp vinegar while stirring continuously.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set and thicken the sauce as they gently cook, giving it body.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the sauce silky and glossy.
Mustard
Provides the main sharp, pungent flavour of the sauce.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness that balances the sharpness of the mustard and vinegar.
Sharp vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and cuts the richness.

The step that matters

Cook over boiling water until it thickens. Egg proteins set gently with indirect heat. Too much heat or too fast a cook can curdle the eggs, so the sauce stays smooth only when heated slowly and stirred.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Cucumberfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, butter, sugar, vinegar. 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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