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Sardines with Egg Cream

A dish of sardines topped with a sauce of butter, egg yolks, tarragon vinegar, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 901 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Sardines with Egg Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the gluten biscuit into square pieces.

  2. Remove the skin and bones from the sardines and break them into flakes.

Make the egg cream

  1. In a saucepan, combine the butter, egg yolks, vinegar, and mustard, stirring until slightly thickened.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the sardine flakes on the gluten slices and warm them in the oven.

  2. Pour the sauce over the sardines and serve immediately.

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. Tarragon + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Biscuit + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together121 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Biscuit + tarragontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together18 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set gently with heat, creating a creamy texture.
Butter
Adds richness and smooth body to the sauce, carrying flavour and helping it stay glossy.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the rich sauce and balances the oily sardines.
Made mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour and helps emulsify the butter and yolks into a smoother sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolk sauce over heat. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but if they get too hot they scramble and turn grainy. Stirring constantly and stopping once slightly thickened keeps the cream smooth.

Swap the tarragon

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonthe original
  3. Nutmegfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, egg, butter, vinegar, 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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