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Sauce

Dutch Sauce

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 base

  1. In a saucepan, combine egg yolks, vinegar, salt, and white pepper. Boil until reduced to 1 teaspoon.

  2. Add cold water and stir on low heat with a wooden spoon for 2-3 minutes.

Finish with butter

  1. Divide the butter into three parts. Stir in one part of the butter until melted.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the second part of the butter until melted.

  3. Finally, stir in the third part of the butter and finish with a spoonful of cold 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. Vinegar + white peppertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Vinegar + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. White pepper + buttertop 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
Emulsify with the butter and set into a thick, smooth sauce when gently heated.
Butter
Adds richness and body, forming the fat phase of the emulsified sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the richness of the butter and egg.

The step that matters

Adding the butter in parts off the heat. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot. Adding butter in portions, partly off the heat, lets the yolks thicken gently and emulsify into a smooth sauce instead of curdling.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vinegar, 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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