Skip to main content
Sauce

Devil Sauce

A spicy, tangy sauce for grilled or fried chicken, made with Harvey sauce, vinegar, butter, mustard, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Devil Sauce

Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Devil Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mix all the ingredients smoothly together on a plate.

Prepare and cook the meat

  1. Score the legs of a cooked chicken or other meat lengthwise and soak well in the sauce.

  2. Grill or fry in a little butter until heated through.

  3. Serve very hot.

  4. Optionally, add 1 tablespoon of cream to the sauce, heat it, and pour over the grilled meat 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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Sauce + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Harvey sauce
Provides the main savoury, tangy flavour that defines the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the butter.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the meat brown when grilled or fried.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour and helps emulsify the sauce.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Shallotfits less well
  4. Tomatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, vinegar, butter, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Mixed MustardMixed Mustard9 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes