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Dutch Sauce

A thickened sauce made with milk, flour, butter, egg yolks, vinegar, mustard, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Dutch Sauce

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Dutch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Add the milk and boil for three minutes.

Add the egg mixture and thicken

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the vinegar, egg yolks, salt, and mustard.

  2. Pour this mixture over the sauce.

  3. Place the pan in a saucepan of boiling water.

  4. Stir until it thickens.

  5. If the sauce is not thick, return it to the pan.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set with gentle heat and add richness.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth base for the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the flour blend smoothly.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the yolks and butter.

The step that matters

Place the pan in a saucepan of boiling water. Egg yolks thicken at gentle heat, but over direct high heat they can scramble and turn grainy. Gentle indirect heat from the water bath lets the sauce thicken smoothly.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

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