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Sauce

Egg Sauce

Egg Sauce is a sauce made from boiled eggs, melted butter, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Egg Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the eggs for 15 minutes, then place them in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Remove the shells, cut the egg whites into small dice, and sieve the yolks.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, heat the melted butter until boiling.

  2. Stir in the diced egg whites, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  3. Pour the sauce over fish and garnish with the sieved yolks.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Hard-boiled eggs
Diced whites add body and texture, while sieved yolks provide a rich, creamy garnish.
Melted butter
Provides fat and a rich, smooth base that carries the flavour of the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and egg flavours.

The step that matters

Heating the melted butter until boiling. Butter that is overheated can brown and turn bitter, and it may separate. Heating only until it boils keeps the sauce smooth and mild before the egg is added.

“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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