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Sauce

Dutch Sauce

A sauce made from melted butter, egg yolks, salt, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice, thickened by gentle heating.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Dutch Sauce

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Dutch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter and place it in a saucepan.

  2. Add the egg yolks to the melted butter.

  3. Set the saucepan in a larger pan of hot water over medium heat and stir with a wooden spoon.

  4. Season with salt and a light sprinkle of Cayenne pepper.

  5. Stir continuously until the sauce thickens, ensuring it does not boil to prevent curdling.

  6. Just before finishing, stir in the lemon juice.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 butter and thicken into a smooth, rich sauce as they gently heat.
Melted butter
Provides fat that carries flavor and gives the sauce its silky, rich body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and egg flavor.

The step that matters

Keep the heat gentle while stirring. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently, but boiling or strong heat scrambles them and causes curdling. Stirring constantly over indirect hot water spreads the heat evenly and keeps the sauce smooth.

“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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