Name: Devil Sauce
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon mixed mustard; 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce; 1 ounce glaze; 1 ounce butter; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper; bread crumbs; chopped parsley

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Devil Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

Warm and mix together the mustard, Worcestershire sauce, glaze, butter, salt, and cayenne pepper.
Rub the mixture onto the meat that is to be broiled.

Finish and serve

Sprinkle the meat with bread crumbs and chopped parsley.
In the remaining mixture, add an equal part of butter and glaze, along with 1 tablespoon of chopped parsley. Warm this mixture.
Serve it in the dish.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,588 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Mustard + saucetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,120 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Mixed mustard: Adds sharp, tangy flavour that cuts through the richness of the butter and glaze.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and a smooth texture that carries the seasonings onto the meat.
Glaze: Adds sweetness and helps the sauce brown and cling to the meat.
Worcestershire sauce: Adds savoury, acidic depth to the sauce.

Swap the mustard

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

Shallotfits better
Capsicumfits better
Carrotfits better
Mustardthe original

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