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Egg Sauce

A creamy sauce made from milk, water, egg, lemon, butter, cornflour, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Egg Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the milk and water.

  2. Add the butter, pepper, and salt.

  3. Thicken the sauce with the cornflour.

  4. Beat the egg with the lemon juice.

  5. Remove the sauce from the heat and gradually add the egg mixture, stirring gently to avoid curdling.

  6. Warm the sauce again, but do not allow it to boil.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Beaten egg enriches the sauce and thickens it gently when warmed, giving it a silky body.
Cornflour
Starch swells in hot liquid to thicken the sauce into a smooth coating consistency.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich mouthfeel and a smooth, glossy finish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the butter and egg.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture. Egg proteins set when heated, so adding the beaten egg to a hot sauce can scramble it. Removing the pan from the heat first and stirring gently helps keep 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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