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Egg Sauce

A creamy sauce made from eggs, cream, and seasonings, served over seafood.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,398 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Egg Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the cream until very hot, but do not let it burn.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the salt and white pepper.

  3. Slowly add the egg mixture to the hot cream, stirring constantly.

  4. If the sauce is too thick, add boiling milk until it reaches the desired consistency.

Serve

  1. Add the sauce to cooked seafood like oysters, shrimp, lobster, or salmon, and let it boil once.

  2. Do not add vinegar or lemon until serving.

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. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

  2. White pepper + parsleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Milk + tomatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Provides the rich base and smooth, fluid body of the sauce.
Eggs
Thicken the sauce as they set gently in the hot cream, giving it body.

The step that matters

Slowly add the egg mixture to the hot cream, stirring constantly. Eggs set when they get hot enough. Adding them slowly while stirring tempers them, so they blend into the cream smoothly instead of scrambling into lumps.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, egg, white pepper, milk, parsley):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, white pepper, milk, parsley. 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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