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Sauce

Sauce for Cold Fowl, or Partridge

A sauce made from egg yolks, anchovy, oil, vinegar, shallot, cayenne pepper, and mustard, served cold with fowl.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 859 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Sauce for Cold Fowl, or Partridge

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a mortar, pound the egg yolks, anchovy, oil, vinegar, shallot, cayenne, and mustard until smooth.

  2. Strain the mixture 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.

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. Shallot + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + shallottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 fat and fine-textured solids emulsify with the oil to thicken the sauce into a smooth, rich body.
Anchovy
Adds savoury depth and umami that rounds out the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard.
Oil
Forms the fat phase of the emulsion, giving the sauce its silky, spoonable texture.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that brightens the rich yolk and oil and balances the flavour.
Mustard
Its emulsifying compounds help hold the oil and yolk together and add a sharp bite.

The step that matters

Pounding the yolks with the oil and vinegar until smooth. Yolk and oil form an emulsion only when worked slowly and thoroughly, so the sauce stays smooth instead of breaking into greasy droplets. Pounding until fully smooth also breaks down the shallot and anchovy so they blend evenly.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Horseradishfits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Lettucefits about as well
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, anchovy, vinegar, pepper, mustard. 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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