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Salad

Gravies and Sauces

A sauce made from egg yolks, water or cream, oil or butter, salt or sugar, mustard, and vinegar, garnished with chopped egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Gravies and Sauces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs for 12 minutes.

  2. Place the boiled eggs in cold water until completely cool.

  3. Sieve the yolks into a bowl using a wooden spoon.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the yolks with water or cream, then add oil or melted butter.

  2. Gradually mix in salt or sugar and mustard until smooth.

  3. Slowly add vinegar, mixing until fully incorporated.

  4. Let the sauce sit at the bottom of the bowl until ready to serve.

Garnish and serve

  1. Chop the white of the egg.

  2. Use the chopped egg white to garnish the salad.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks form the body of the sauce, emulsifying with oil and liquid to make it thick and creamy.
Oil or melted butter
Fat that is emulsified into the yolks, giving the sauce richness and a smooth texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the yolks and fat.
Mustard
Its natural emulsifiers help hold the oil and yolk mixture together in a stable sauce.

The step that matters

Slowly add vinegar, mixing until fully incorporated. Adding acid too quickly can break the emulsion, so the sauce separates and turns thin or oily. Adding it slowly and mixing well lets the yolk and fat bind into a smooth, stable sauce.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Cucumberfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, butter, sugar, vinegar. 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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