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Sauce

Dutch Sauce

A thickened sauce made from egg yolks, butter, water, salt, and white pepper.

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

Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Dutch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the egg yolks, butter, water, salt, and white pepper.

  2. Place the pan over medium heat and stir the sauce with a wooden spoon until it thickens.

Strain and hold warm

  1. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve.

  2. Keep the sauce warm by placing the vessel in a pan of boiling water.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Egg + white peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,312 recipes

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

  3. Butter + white peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Their proteins set when gently heated, thickening the sauce and holding it together.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stir over medium heat until it thickens. Gentle heat and constant stirring let the egg yolk proteins thicken the sauce and emulsify the butter. Too much heat scrambles the yolks, leaving a curdled, grainy sauce.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter. 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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