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Sauce

Egg Sauce

A sauce made from mashed hard‑boiled egg yolks, mustard, pepper, salt, vinegar, salad oil, and optional ketchup.

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 ↓

Egg Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mash the yolks of 2 hard boiled eggs until smooth.

  2. Mix in 1 teaspoon of mustard, a little pepper, and ¼ teaspoon of salt.

  3. Add 3 tablespoons of vinegar and 3 tablespoons of salad oil, then stir well to combine.

  4. Optionally, add 1 tablespoon of ketchup for extra flavor.

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. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Mustard + ketchuptop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together331 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Vinegar + ketchuptop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify with the oil and form the body of the sauce.
Salad oil
Adds richness and smooth texture by emulsifying with the yolks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the oil.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and helps stabilise the emulsion.

The step that matters

Add the oil and vinegar. Oil must be added gradually and stirred well so it emulsifies into the mashed yolks. Adding it too fast or not combining thoroughly can cause the sauce to separate and look greasy.

Flavor stand-ins for the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Horseradishabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Shallotabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, vinegar, ketchup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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