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Sauce

Deviled Sauce

A savory sauce made with butter, parsley, mustard, onions, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Deviled Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the chopped parsley, mustard, onions, and vinegar; cook for 2 minutes while stirring continuously.

  3. Stir in Worcestershire sauce, salt, black pepper, and cayenne.

  4. Adjust seasoning with additional mustard and Worcestershire sauce if desired.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melts to form the fat base that carries the other flavours.
Onions
Soften during cooking, adding sweetness and savoury body to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sauce and balances the richness of the butter.
Mustard
Contributes pungent heat and sharpness that gives the sauce its characteristic bite.

The step that matters

Cooking the parsley, mustard, onions and vinegar for 2 minutes. Stirring continuously over heat cooks off some of the harsh raw sharpness of the vinegar and mustard and softens the onions, so the flavours blend rather than tasting raw.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, parsley, mustard, vinegar, sauce, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, mustard, vinegar, sauce, 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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