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Dutch Sauce

A quick sauce made with milk, flour, butter, egg yolk, salt, cayenne pepper, salad oil, and vinegar, served hot over fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Dutch Sauce

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Dutch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix flour with a little milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add the rest of the milk and bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in the butter, beaten egg yolk, salt, and cayenne while boiling.

  4. Gradually add salad oil and then distilled vinegar in drops.

  5. Serve very hot.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, body-rich sauce base.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the other ingredients.
Egg yolk
Emulsifies the oil and vinegar and enriches the sauce to a creamy texture.
Salad oil
Adds fat and richness, helping form a stable emulsion when added gradually.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually add salad oil and then distilled vinegar in drops.. Adding oil and vinegar slowly lets the egg yolk emulsify them into a smooth sauce. Adding them too quickly can cause the sauce to separate and turn greasy.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Sesamefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, butter, egg, pepper, vinegar. 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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