Skip to main content
Sauce

Dutch Sauce

A sauce made with egg yolks, butter, tarragon vinegar, shallot, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Dutch Sauce

Why it works: Tarragon and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 602 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Dutch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the shallot very finely.

  2. Combine the shallot, egg yolks, butter, tarragon vinegar, pepper, and salt in a heatproof bowl.

Make the sauce

  1. Place the bowl over a saucepan of boiling water.

  2. Whisk the mixture over the heat until it thickens.

  3. Transfer the sauce to a serving dish immediately.

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. Tarragon + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Vinegar + shallottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 cook and set, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the sauce feel smooth and silky on the palate.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and sharp herbal flavour that cuts through the richness of the yolks and butter.
Shallot
Adds mild onion-like aroma and savoury flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Whisk over gentle heat until it thickens. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but if the bowl gets too hot they can scramble and curdle. Keeping the bowl over simmering rather than boiling water and whisking constantly helps the sauce thicken smoothly without turning grainy.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, tarragon, vinegar, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesCurry SauceCurry Sauce59 recipes