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Admiral Sauce

A creamy sauce made with butter, anchovies, capers, nutmeg, stock, wine, egg yolks, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 211 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Admiral Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the anchovies, capers, nutmeg, cullis, and white wine.

  3. Heat until warm, then whisk in the egg yolks and cream.

  4. Continue whisking until the sauce is nearly boiling, being careful not to let it curdle.

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. Capers + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together211 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Butter + caperstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and enrich it as they set gently with the cream.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded body to the sauce.
Cullis
Provides the savoury meaty base that carries the rest of the sauce.
Anchovies
Add deep savoury saltiness that fades into the background once cooked.
White wine
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Whisking in the egg yolks and cream. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently, but if the sauce gets too hot or is not whisked constantly, the proteins scramble and the sauce curdles. Keep the heat moderate and stir continuously.

Swap the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, nutmeg, white wine, egg, cream):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, nutmeg, white wine, egg, cream. 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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