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Dutch Sauce

A sauce made with vinegar, shallot, bay leaf, peppercorns, white sauce, egg yolks, butter, lemon juice, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Dutch Sauce

Why it works: Shallot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,523 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Dutch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Combine vinegar, shallot, bay leaf, and peppercorns in a stewpan and reduce to half its original quantity.

  2. Add the white sauce and bring to a boil.

  3. Remove the bay leaf.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the egg yolks and cook until the mixture begins to thicken.

  2. Remove from heat and strain into another stewpan.

  3. Reheat gently, whisking in the butter gradually to prevent curdling.

  4. Add lemon juice and salt to taste.

  5. Serve with boiled fish, artichokes, or asparagus.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Vinegar + shallottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vinegar + winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,493 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens the flavour of the sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they cook and add richness.
Butter
Adds fat and silky texture, enriching the sauce when whisked in.
White sauce
Forms the creamy base that gives the sauce its body.

The step that matters

Whisking in the butter gradually. Adding butter too fast or letting the sauce get too hot can break the emulsion and make it curdle, so it must be whisked in slowly over gentle heat.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, wine, shallot, sauce, egg, butter):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Cherryfits less well
  4. Avocadofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, wine, shallot, sauce, egg, butter. 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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