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Sauce

A Nice Sauce to Throw Over Broiled Meats

A sauce made from salad oil, vinegar, mustard, pepper, salt, and egg yolk for basting broiled meats.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and mustard 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 ↓

A Nice Sauce to Throw Over Broiled Meats

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, beat the salad oil with vinegar, mustard, pepper, and salt.

  2. Stir in the egg yolk until well combined.

Baste the meat

  1. Use this sauce to baste mutton while roasting, scoring the meat to allow the sauce to penetrate.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,210 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Vinegar + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Vinegar and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,922 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

Egg yolk
Lecithin in the yolk helps hold the oil and vinegar together as a stable, smooth sauce.
Salad oil
Supplies fat that carries flavor and helps keep the meat moist while it roasts.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the richness of the oil.
Mustard
Its natural emulsifiers help keep the oil and vinegar from separating.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolk until well combined. The yolk's lecithin is what emulsifies the oil and vinegar. If it is not fully combined, the oil can separate and the sauce will be greasy and uneven on the meat.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Cucumberfits about as well
  4. Cabbagefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, egg. 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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