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Sauce

Devil Sauce

A savory sauce made with mustard, curry paste, Worcestershire sauce, mushroom ketchup, anchovy sauce, salt, egg yolk, soup, and optional brown roux.

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

Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Devil Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, combine mustard, curry paste, Worcestershire sauce, mushroom ketchup, anchovy sauce, salt, and egg yolk.

  2. Add the soup and mix well.

  3. If using a thin soup, thicken with a little brown roux.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Serve

  1. Pour over any broiled meat.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Ketchup + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Mustard + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Emulsifies the sauce and adds richness and body to its texture.
Brown roux
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the meat instead of running off.
Mustard
Adds sharp pungency and helps stabilise the emulsion.
Worcestershire sauce
Contributes savoury depth and acidity to the sauce.

The step that matters

Bringing the mixture to a boil. Egg yolk thickens only gently with heat, and boiling can scramble it into lumps, so the sauce may curdle and lose smoothness. Thickening with roux before boiling helps it stay even.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, mushroom, ketchup, anchovy, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, mushroom, ketchup, anchovy, 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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