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A Sauce for Broiled Meat, Game, or Poultry

A sauce made from hard‑boiled egg yolks, anchovy, onion, shallots, parsley, tarragon, capers, oil, mustard, lemon juice, and tarragon vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 405 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

A Sauce for Broiled Meat, Game, or Poultry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bruise the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs with a little water and salt.

  2. Bone and mince the anchovy, onion, shallots, parsley, tarragon, and capers.

  3. Mix the minced ingredients with the egg yolks.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the oil, mustard, lemon juice, and tarragon vinegar, and mix everything together thoroughly.

  2. Transfer to a sauce tureen and serve with broiled meat or cold veal.

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. Shallot + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Capers + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Shallot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Tarragon + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together379 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Shallot + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks bind with oil and mustard to form a thick, smooth sauce body.
Oil
Adds richness and carries flavour, emulsifying with the yolks into a creamy texture.
Mustard
Its natural emulsifiers help hold the oil and yolks together and add sharp flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Anchovy
Contributes savoury depth that rounds out the sauce's flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the oil to the yolks. Oil must be incorporated gradually into the yolk mixture so it emulsifies. Adding it too quickly or unevenly can cause it to separate, leaving a greasy, broken sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, anchovy, shallot, parsley, tarragon, capers, mustard):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, anchovy, shallot, parsley, tarragon, capers, mustard. 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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