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Salad

Our Own Sauce for Salad or Cold Meat

A creamy sauce made with egg yolks, spices, oil, meat jelly, and vinegar, suitable for salads or cold meats.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Our Own Sauce for Salad or Cold Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks with salt, cayenne, and nutmeg.

  2. Gradually stir in the oil until the sauce is smooth.

  3. Add the meat jelly and cucumber vinegar, mixing well.

Optional additions

  1. For a richer flavor, consider adding chili vinegar or a bit of clear veal jelly.

  2. Optionally, incorporate a small amount of bruised garlic or shallot vinegar for extra taste.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Nutmeg + cucumbertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together432 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Pepper + cucumbertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks emulsify the oil, giving the sauce its thick, creamy body.
Oil
Supplies the fat that makes the sauce rich and smooth.
Meat jelly
Gelatin adds body and a savory, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Cucumber vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich yolk and oil.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the oil. Egg yolks can only hold oil in suspension when it is added slowly. Pouring it in too fast overwhelms the yolk's emulsifiers, so the sauce separates and turns greasy instead of smooth.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, meat, cucumber, 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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