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Sauce

Imitation Dutch Sauce

A thick, sharp sauce made from flour, water, butter, salt, lemon or vinegar, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Imitation Dutch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix the flour with boiling water, stirring continuously until thickened.

  2. Add the coarse sea salt and fresh butter, stirring until the butter is dissolved.

  3. Incorporate the lemon juice or vinegar to make the sauce sharp.

Finish and thicken

  1. Remove from heat and gradually stir in the beaten egg yolks.

  2. Return the saucepan to a very low heat and stir for 10 minutes, ensuring it does not boil.

  3. The sauce should be as thick as rich cream when finished.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Fine flour
Thickens the boiling water into a smooth, stable base for the sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and thicken it further as they gently set on low heat.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a silky texture as it melts into the sauce.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Returning the sauce to low heat. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat but scramble and curdle if the sauce boils, so keep it very low and do not let it boil while stirring for 10 minutes.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, egg):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, egg. 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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