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Sauce

Another Dutch Sauce

A sauce made from egg yolks, butter, elder vinegar, water, and salt, served hot with fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Another Dutch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, beat the egg yolks with a small spoon.

  2. Add the butter, elder vinegar, water, and salt.

  3. Stir over medium heat until it begins to boil.

  4. Strain through a fine sieve if too thick, adding more water if necessary.

  5. Serve hot, best with fish.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Egg + vinegartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and vinegar 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the sauce feel smooth and silky.
Elder vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness of the butter and yolks.

The step that matters

Stir over medium heat until it begins to boil. Egg yolks thicken as they heat but can scramble if they get too hot. Stirring constantly over moderate heat keeps the sauce smooth and lets it thicken evenly.

“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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