Skip to main content
Sauce

Sauce for Asparagus or Cauliflower

A creamy sauce made from egg yolks, butter, mustard, and tarragon vinegar, suitable for asparagus or cauliflower.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 901 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Sauce for Asparagus or Cauliflower

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mash the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs until smooth.

  2. Add the raw egg yolks, butter, mustard, cayenne pepper, salt, tarragon vinegar, and lemon juice.

  3. Stir in the chopped whites of the hard-boiled eggs, onion, cream, and parsley.

  4. Cook over boiling water until the mixture thickens, stirring constantly.

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 + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Tarragon + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Walnut + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they cook and give it a rich, smooth body.
Hard-boiled eggs
Provide the mashed yolk base and chopped whites that give the sauce body and texture.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the sauce's texture.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Cook over boiling water until the mixture thickens. Raw egg yolks thicken through gentle heat and can scramble or curdle if overheated. Keep the water simmering rather than fiercely boiling, and stir constantly so the heat spreads evenly.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, mustard, pepper, tarragon, vinegar, lemon):

  1. Walnutthe original
  2. Chickpeafits about as well
  3. Lentilsfits about as well
  4. Beansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, mustard, pepper, tarragon, vinegar, 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.

More asparagus sauce recipes

Shrimp 3 See all 46 →

You might also like

Hot Lemon Cream SauceHot Lemon Cream Sauce11 recipesMixed MustardMixed Mustard9 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipes