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Sauce

Devil Sauce

A butter and mustard sauce with black pepper and cayenne, served over grilled meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Devil Sauce

Why it works: Mustard and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,430 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Devil Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat without letting it get too hot.

  2. Stir in the prepared mustard and a pinch of mixed black and cayenne pepper.

  3. Mix well until the sauce resembles thick custard.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over grilled meat just before serving.

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. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Butter + mustardtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,003 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melts to form the fat base that carries the mustard and pepper flavours.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharp, acidic flavour and helps emulsify the butter into a smooth sauce.
Black pepper
Contributes sharp, aromatic heat that seasons the sauce.
Cayenne pepper
Adds clean, lingering heat to the sauce.

The step that matters

Keep the heat low when melting the butter. If the butter gets too hot it can separate or scorch, so the sauce loses its smooth, thick custard-like texture and may taste burnt.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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