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A Sauce for Broiled Meat, Game, or Poultry

A sauce made with hard-boiled eggs, anchovy, onion, shallots, herbs, capers, oil, mustard, lemon juice, and tarragon vinegar, served with broiled meat, game, or poultry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 405 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

A Sauce for Broiled Meat, Game, or Poultry

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Bruise the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs with water and salt.

  2. Mix in the minced anchovy, onion, shallots, parsley, tarragon, and capers.

  3. Add the oil, mustard, lemon juice, and tarragon vinegar. Mix everything together thoroughly.

  4. Transfer to a sauce tureen and serve with broiled meat, game, or poultry, or with cold veal.

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. Shallot + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Shallot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Tarragon + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together379 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Shallot + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Mashed yolks form the thick, creamy body of the sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and helps emulsify the oil into the sauce.
Fine oil
Provides richness and a smooth, silky texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the oil.
Anchovy
Contributes savory depth, giving the sauce a rounded, salty background flavour.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet-sharp onion aroma that lifts the sauce.

The step that matters

Mix everything together thoroughly. Oil and egg yolk only form a stable, smooth emulsion when they are well combined. Incomplete mixing leaves the oil separated and the sauce greasy and grainy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, anchovy, shallot, parsley, tarragon, capers, mustard):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, anchovy, shallot, parsley, tarragon, capers, mustard. 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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