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Sauce

101 Dutch Sauce

A sauce made from egg yolks, butter, flour, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

101 Dutch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the yolks of three eggs in an earthenware pan.

  2. Add ⅓ cup of butter, 1 teaspoon of flour, and the juice of one lemon.

  3. Place the pan in a saucepan of boiling water over heat.

  4. Stir the mixture until smooth, ensuring it does not boil to prevent curdling.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour 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

Egg yolks
Emulsify with the butter and set into a smooth, thick sauce as they gently heat.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Flour
Stabilizes the sauce, helping it stay smooth and resist breaking under heat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity, brightening the rich egg and butter flavour.

The step that matters

Stir over gently simmering water without letting it boil. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently, but if the mixture gets too hot it scrambles and curdles. Keeping the water below a boil and stirring constantly lets the yolks thicken evenly into a smooth sauce.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

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