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Mousseline Sauce

A creamy sauce made from egg yolks, lemon juice, egg white, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mousseline Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a small saucepan, whisk together the egg yolks, lemon juice, egg white, salt, pepper, and cayenne.

  2. Add a small piece of butter and whisk over very gentle heat until absorbed.

  3. Continue adding small pieces of butter, whisking until each piece is absorbed before adding more.

  4. Whisk until the sauce is thick and frothy, ensuring it does not boil to prevent curdling.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately, as the sauce will continue to cook if left in the saucepan.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the butter and thicken the sauce as they set with gentle heat.
Butter
Adds richness and body, emulsified into the yolks to make a smooth sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and yolk flavor.

The step that matters

Keep the heat very gentle. Egg yolks begin to set around 65°C and curdle if they get too hot or boil, so the sauce can turn grainy. Whisking over low heat while adding butter slowly keeps the emulsion smooth and thick.

“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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