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Sauce

Sauce a LA Diable

A sauce made from egg yolks, mustard, wine, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 9,243 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

  1. Rub the hard‑boiled yolks with the raw yolk until fine.

  2. Mix in the oil, mustard, white pepper, lemon zest, grated onion, salt, and sugar.

  3. Slowly add the red Rhine wine while beating well.

  4. Serve the sauce immediately.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Mustard + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,243 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + winetop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together5,993 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. White pepper + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,657 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Mustard + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,815 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Egg + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together43,327 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Their fine, mashed texture thickens the sauce and gives it body.
Raw egg yolk
Its emulsifying lecithin binds the oil and wine into a smooth, stable sauce.
Oil
Provides the fat that makes the sauce rich and glossy when emulsified.
Mustard
Contributes sharpness and helps stabilise the emulsion.
Red rhine wine
Adds liquid and acidity that loosens the emulsion and brightens the flavour.

The step that matters

Slowly add the red Rhine wine while beating well. Adding liquid too fast can break the emulsion, so the oil and wine separate. Adding it slowly while beating keeps the yolks able to hold the mixture together as a smooth sauce.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  2. Horseradishbetter flavor fit
  3. Asparagusbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, white pepper, lemon, sugar, wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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