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Sauce

Devil Sauce

A spicy sauce made from Harvey sauce, vinegar, butter, mustard, pepper, salt, and optional cream, used to flavor grilled or fried chicken.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Devil Sauce

Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Devil Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mix Harvey sauce, vinegar, melted butter, mustard, pepper, and salt together on a plate.

Prepare and cook the meat

  1. Score the legs of a cooked chicken or other meat lengthwise and soak in the sauce.

  2. Grill or fry the meat in a little butter until hot.

  3. If desired, add cream to the sauce, heat it, and pour over the grilled meat before serving.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Harvey sauce
Provides the main savory, tangy flavour base of the sauce.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and helping the meat brown.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sauce and balances the rich butter.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that gives the sauce its bite.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, milder texture to the warmed sauce.

The step that matters

Grilling or frying the meat until hot. Surface browning develops flavour through the Maillard reaction, and the meat must be heated through so the soaked sauce cooks in and tastes right. Overheating can dry the meat or scorch the butter.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Onionfits about as well
  4. Horseradishfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, vinegar, butter, pepper, cream. 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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