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Dutch Sauce

A sauce made with horseradish, thyme, onion, shallots, vinegar, egg yolks, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Dutch Sauce

Why it works: Horseradish and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 376 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Dutch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the infusion

  1. Combine horseradish, thyme, onion, shallots, and vinegar in a saucepan.

  2. Cover and steep.

Make the sauce

  1. Add egg yolks and butter to another saucepan.

  2. Heat gently without boiling.

  3. Add the softened roots to the egg mixture.

  4. Stir until hot.

  5. Strain through a fine sieve.

  6. Serve over fish or as desired.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Horseradish + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Thyme + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Horseradish + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Horseradish + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together169 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and give it a rich, smooth body as they gently set with heat.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the sauce feel smooth and silky on the palate.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness of the yolks and butter.
Grated horseradish
Provides the pungent, sharp heat that defines the sauce's flavour.

The step that matters

Heat gently without boiling. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but if they get too hot they can scramble and curdle, leaving the sauce grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (horseradish, thyme, shallot, vinegar, egg, butter):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against horseradish, thyme, shallot, vinegar, egg, 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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