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Sauce

Egg Sauce

Egg sauce made with water, butter, hard‑boiled eggs, lemon juice, mustard, vinegar, oil, and optional parsley and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Egg Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the first sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix the water and butter until well combined.

  2. Add the chopped hard boiled eggs and lemon juice, mixing thoroughly.

  3. Stir in parsley if desired.

Make the second sauce

  1. For the second sauce, mash the yolks of two hard boiled eggs with mustard, pepper, and salt.

  2. Add vinegar and salad oil, mixing until smooth.

  3. Incorporate ketchup if using for added flavor.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat, richness and a smooth, creamy body to the sauce.
Hard boiled eggs
Mashed yolks add richness and body, and chopped egg adds texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavor and helps stabilize the emulsion of yolks and oil.
Vinegar
Adds acidity and sharpness that cut through the fat.
Salad oil
Adds fat that emulsifies with the mashed yolks for a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Adding the vinegar and salad oil to the mashed yolks. Oil must be incorporated gradually and mixed well so it disperses into tiny droplets held by the yolk's lecithin. Adding it too fast or under-mixing can make the sauce separate and look greasy instead of smooth.

Flavor stand-ins for the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, lemon, mustard, pepper, vinegar, ketchup):

  1. Tarragonbetter flavor fit
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, lemon, mustard, 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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