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Gravies and Sauces

A creamy sauce made from boiled eggs, mustard, vinegar, and oil, garnished with egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Gravies and Sauces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the yolks

  1. Boil the eggs for 12 minutes, then place them in cold water until completely cool.

  2. Sieve the yolks into a bowl using a wooden spoon.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the yolks with ½ cup of Water or double Cream.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of Oil or melted Butter and mix well.

  3. Gradually add 1 teaspoon of Salt or powdered lump Sugar and 1 teaspoon of made Mustard, mixing until smooth.

  4. Slowly incorporate 3 tablespoons of Vinegar, mixing thoroughly.

Garnish and serve

  1. Chop the white of the egg and use it to garnish the top of the salad.

  2. Let the sauce sit at the bottom of the bowl until ready to 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 + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks form the base of the sauce, emulsifying with oil and liquid to give body.
Oil or melted butter
Fat that is emulsified into the yolks, giving the sauce richness and a smooth texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness of the fat.
Made mustard
Its emulsifiers help hold the oil and liquid together, and it adds a sharp flavour.

The step that matters

Slowly incorporate the vinegar. Adding the acid gradually while mixing lets the emulsion form and stay stable; adding it all at once can break the sauce, leaving it oily and thin.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, butter, sugar, vinegar):

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Cucumberfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, butter, sugar, vinegar. 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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