Name: English Sauce for Salad, Cold Meat, or Cold Fish
Ingredients: 2 hard-boiled egg yolks; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 2 teaspoons powdered sugar; a few grains of cayenne pepper; 1 teaspoon cold water; ½ cup sweet cream or 6 tablespoons olive oil; 1 tablespoon strong chili vinegar; 1 tablespoon common or French vinegar

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

English Sauce for Salad, Cold Meat, or Cold Fish

Ingredients

2 hard-boiled egg yolks
¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt
2 teaspoons powdered sugar
a few grains of cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon cold water
½ cup sweet cream or 6 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon strong chili vinegar
1 tablespoon common or French vinegar

Directions

Prepare the yolks

Boil the egg yolks for at least 15 minutes and let them cool completely.
Mash the yolks with the back of a wooden spoon until smooth.

Make the sauce

Add salt, sugar, cayenne, and cold water; mix well.
Gradually stir in the sweet cream or olive oil until the sauce resembles custard.
Add chili vinegar and enough common or French vinegar to taste.

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.

Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,806 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together21,449 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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

Hard-boiled egg yolks: Provide the base body, as the cooked yolks thicken into a smooth, custard-like mass.
Sweet cream or olive oil: Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, emulsified body.
Common or french vinegar: Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the yolks and fat.
Strong chili vinegar: Adds sharp acidity and heat that brighten the sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the sweet cream or olive oil. Adding the fat slowly lets it emulsify into the mashed yolks. Adding it all at once can break the mixture so it looks oily and separated instead of smooth and custard-like.

“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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English Sauce for Salad, Cold Meat, or Cold Fish