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Sauce

Mr. Kelly's Sauce for Boiled Trifle Calf's Head, or Cottage

A sauce made with garlic vinegar, mustard, brown sugar, black pepper, melted butter, capers, parsley, egg yolks, anchovies, oil, vinegar, shallot, cayenne pepper, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mr. Kelly's Sauce for Boiled Trifle Calf's Head, or Cottage

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Stir garlic vinegar, mustard, brown sugar, and black pepper into melted butter in a bowl.

  2. Pound capers and minced parsley together until fine.

  3. Mix in the yolks of hard-boiled eggs and mustard until well combined.

Prepare the anchovies

  1. Bone the anchovies. Pound the anchovies. Rub the anchovies through a sieve.

  2. Combine anchovies with oil, vinegar, shallot, and cayenne pepper in a mortar. Mix the mixture well.

Finish the sauce

  1. Stir the mixture into the gravy or melted butter.

  2. Strain the sauce through a sieve.

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 + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Garlic + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together834 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Hard-boiled yolks bind the sauce and give it a smooth, rich body.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying the flavours and giving the sauce a smooth mouthfeel.
Anchovies
Pounded to a paste, they add a deep savoury, salty flavour that rounds the sauce.
Garlic vinegar
Provides sharp acidity and aroma that cut through the rich butter and yolks.
Mustard
Adds sharp pungency and helps emulsify the butter and yolks.

The step that matters

Stir the anchovy mixture into the gravy or melted butter. Adding the paste to a warm liquid all at once can leave lumps or separate the emulsion. Adding it gradually and mixing well keeps the sauce smooth and evenly seasoned before straining.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, mustard, sugar, pepper, butter, capers, parsley):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, mustard, sugar, pepper, butter, capers, parsley. 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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