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Egg Sauce

A sauce made from mashed hard‑boiled egg yolks, mustard, vinegar, and oil, served with boiled fish or eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Egg Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mash the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs with mustard, pepper, salt, vinegar, and salad oil.

  2. Add ketchup if desired.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled fish.

  2. Mix with drawn butter and add sliced or chopped hard-boiled eggs.

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

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

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Mustard + ketchuptop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together331 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Their lecithin helps the oil disperse into a smooth, stable sauce.
Mustard
Its natural emulsifiers help hold the sauce together, and it adds sharp flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich yolks and oil.
Salad oil
Supplies fat that gives the sauce a smooth, rich texture.
Drawn butter
Adds richness and a buttery flavour to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Mashing the yolks with the oil. Egg yolk lecithin and mustard's emulsifiers help oil break into tiny droplets that stay suspended. Adding the oil too quickly or unevenly can let the sauce separate and turn greasy.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Horseradishfits about as well

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