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Egg Sauce

A sauce made from mashed hard‑boiled egg yolks, mustard, pepper, salt, vinegar, oil, and optional ketchup, served with boiled fish.

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 ↓

Egg Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mash the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add mustard, pepper, coarse sea salt, vinegar, and salad oil, then mix until well combined.

  3. Stir in ketchup if desired.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled fish.

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

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

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + ketchuptop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together331 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Vinegar + ketchuptop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Their fat and emulsifying lecithin help bind the vinegar and oil into a smooth, thick sauce.
Salad oil
Supplies fat that gives the sauce a rich, creamy body and mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness of the yolks and oil.
Mustard
Contains emulsifiers that help hold the oil and vinegar together and adds sharp flavour.

The step that matters

Add the oil and vinegar gradually while mixing. Egg yolks emulsify oil into the liquid, but adding oil too quickly can overwhelm them and make the sauce separate or look greasy. Mixing steadily until fully combined keeps it smooth.

Flavor stand-ins for the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Horseradishabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Shallotabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, vinegar, ketchup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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