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Sauce

English Sauce Fob Salad, Cold Meat, or Cold Fish

A creamy sauce made from hard‑boiled egg yolks, sweet cream or olive oil, vinegar, and seasonings, used for salad, cold meat, or cold fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

English Sauce Fob Salad, Cold Meat, or Cold Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the yolks

  1. Boil the eggs for at least 15 minutes and let them cool completely.

  2. Mash the yolks with a wooden spoon until smooth.

Make the sauce

  1. Add salt, sugar, cayenne, and cold water; mix well.

  2. Gradually stir in the sweet cream or olive oil until the sauce resembles custard.

  3. Add chili vinegar and enough common or French vinegar to taste.

  4. For extra flavor, consider adding eschalot vinegar, Harvey's sauce, essence of anchovies, French mustard, tarragon vinegar, or a small piece of garlic.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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 yolks
Form the thick, smooth base that gives the sauce its custard-like body.
Sweet cream or olive oil
Adds richness and fat, letting the yolks emulsify into a thick, smooth sauce.
Common or french vinegar
Brings acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the richness of the sauce.
Chili vinegar
Adds sharp acidity and gentle heat that gives the sauce its spiciness.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the sweet cream or olive oil. Adding the fat slowly lets the yolk lecithin emulsify it into the mash. Adding it all at once can break the sauce into greasy separated oil, so it does not thicken into a custard-like texture.

“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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