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Dutch Sauce

A savory sauce made with onion, horseradish, anchovies, alder vinegar, stock, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Dutch Sauce

Why it works: Onion and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,784 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Dutch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the sliced onion, horseradish, anchovies, alder vinegar, and stock.

  2. Bring to a boil and simmer for about 10 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve back into the saucepan.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a bowl, whisk the eggs to create a liaison.

  2. Stir the liaison into the sauce and heat on the stove until it begins to boil.

  3. Remove from heat and continue stirring until cooled.

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. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Horseradish + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Horseradish + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together694 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Vinegar + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Vinegar and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,922 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

Eggs
Thicken the sauce as a liaison, setting gently when heated.
Anchovies
Add savory depth, giving the sauce a salty, umami backbone.
Alder vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sauce and balances its richness.
Horseradish
Provides the sharp, pungent aroma and heat characteristic of the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the liaison to the hot sauce. Egg proteins set when heated, so if the sauce boils after the eggs go in, they can curdle and turn grainy. Stirring constantly and heating gently keeps the sauce smooth and thickened.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against horseradish, vinegar, egg. 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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