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Sauce

Cambridge Sauce

A creamy sauce made from egg yolks, anchovies, capers, herbs, mustard, and oil, finished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cambridge Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine egg yolks, anchovies, capers, tarragon, chervil, chives, and burnet in a mortar.

  2. Pound the mixture well.

  3. Add English mustard, French mustard, pepper, and salt.

  4. Moisten with salad oil and tarragon vinegar until thick.

  5. Transfer the mixture to a tammy over a dish and rub through to remove any lumps.

Chill and serve

  1. Place the sauce in a small basin and keep it on ice until ready to serve.

  2. Before serving, stir in chopped parsley.

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. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Chervil + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together370 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Capers + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Capers + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Capers + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together245 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

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Form the thick, smooth body of the sauce as they are pounded and bound with oil.
Salad oil
Adds richness and moisture, emulsifying with the yolks to thicken the sauce.
Anchovy fillets
Add a salty, savoury depth that gives the sauce its character.
French capers
Contribute sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the rich yolks.
English mustard
Adds sharp heat and helps stabilise the emulsion.

The step that matters

Moisten with salad oil and tarragon vinegar until thick. Oil must be added slowly to the pounded yolks so they emulsify. Adding it too fast can split the sauce into greasy pools instead of a thick, smooth texture.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, anchovy, capers, tarragon, chervil, chive, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Beetrootfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, anchovy, capers, tarragon, chervil, chive, 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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