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Sauce

Dutch Sauce

A sauce made with onion, horseradish, anchovies, elder vinegar, stock, and eggs, simmered and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Dutch Sauce

Why it works: Onion and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,784 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Dutch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine onion, horseradish, anchovies, elder vinegar, and second stock in a stewpan.

  2. Boil for 10 minutes, then strain through a fine sieve.

  3. Return the strained mixture to the stewpan.

Finish the sauce

  1. Whisk the eggs to make a liaison.

  2. Add the liaison to the sauce.

  3. Heat the sauce on the fire until it comes to a boil.

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. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Horseradish + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Horseradish + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together694 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Vinegar + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Vinegar and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,922 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

Eggs
Thicken the sauce as they set when the liaison is heated, giving it body.
Anchovies
Add savory depth and a salty, umami note to the sauce.
Elder vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sauce and balances its richness.
Onion
Contributes aromatic flavor and sweetness as it cooks in the liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the liaison to the sauce. Egg yolks thicken only at moderate heat. If the sauce is too hot when the liaison goes in, the eggs can scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against horseradish, vinegar, egg. 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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