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German Remoulade Sauce

A German-style mayonnaise-like sauce made with onion, egg yolks, mustard, sugar, oil, vinegar, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

German Remoulade Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Grate the onion and set aside.

  2. Sieve the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs into a bowl.

  3. Add the dry mustard, sugar, oil, grated onion, vinegar, salt, and cayenne to the bowl and mix all ingredients smoothly.

  4. Serve with celery.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify with the oil to give the sauce a thick, smooth body.
Oil
Provides fat that, emulsified with the yolks, gives the sauce its creamy richness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the fat and sweetness.
Dry mustard
Adds pungent flavour and helps stabilise the emulsion.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the sharp vinegar and mustard.
White onion
Contributes sharp, aromatic flavour and moisture through its grated pulp.

The step that matters

Mix all ingredients smoothly. Oil must be incorporated slowly into the egg yolk so it forms a stable emulsion; adding it all at once or mixing too roughly can cause the sauce to split or turn thin and greasy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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