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Sauce

Sauce Diable

A spicy sauce made with demi‑glace, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, shallots, butter, cayenne pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 859 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Sauce Diable

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the shallots in butter until golden.

  2. Add the demi‑glace sauce, mixed mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and a pinch of cayenne.

  3. Stir until it boils, then skim and strain through a fine strainer.

  4. Add finely chopped parsley and serve.

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. Mustard + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Demi-glace sauce
Provides the rich, savoury base that forms the body of the sauce.
Butter
Fats the shallots, carrying their flavour and helping them brown to golden.
Shallots
Add mild, sweet aromatic flavour once softened and golden in butter.
Mixed mustard
Adds sharp, pungent heat that sharpens the savoury depth of the sauce.
Worcestershire sauce
Contributes salty, tangy umami that deepens the overall savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Stir until it boils, then skim and strain. Bringing the sauce to a boil lets it reduce and concentrate, while skimming removes foam and fat that would cloud its texture. Straining through a fine strainer then gives a smooth, glossy finish.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Horseradishfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, butter, shallot, pepper, parsley. 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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