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Sauce

Cambridge Sauce

A thick egg yolk and anchovy sauce seasoned with capers, mustard, herbs, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cambridge Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a mortar, combine the egg yolks and anchovy fillets.

  2. Add the capers, tarragon, chervil, chives, and burnet; pound well together. Mix in the mustards, pepper, and salt.

  3. Moisten the mixture with salad oil and tarragon vinegar until thick.

  4. Rub the sauce through a tammy into a dish to achieve a smooth consistency.

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 + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Chervil + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together370 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Capers + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Capers + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Capers + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together245 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

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Form the thick base and give the sauce its creamy body.
Anchovy fillets
Add a salty, savoury depth that blends into the sauce.
Salad oil
Adds fat that emulsifies with the yolks to thicken the sauce.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich yolk and oil mixture.

The step that matters

Moisten with oil and vinegar until thick. Oil must be added gradually so it emulsifies into the yolk mixture; adding it too fast can break the sauce and leave it oily and loose.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, anchovy, capers, tarragon, chervil, chive, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Beetrootfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, anchovy, capers, tarragon, chervil, chive, 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.

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