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Sauce

Egg Sauce

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Make the sauce

  1. Mash the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add the mustard, vinegar, pepper, salt, and salad oil.

  3. Mix until smooth and well combined.

Serve

  1. Serve as a sauce for fish.

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. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Egg + mustardtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,210 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + vinegartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and vinegar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,922 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

Egg yolks
Their fat and emulsifying lecithin help bind the vinegar and oil into a smooth, thick sauce.
Salad oil
Supplies fat that gives the sauce its richness and smooth, creamy body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the yolks and oil.
Mustard
Contains emulsifiers that help hold the oil and vinegar together and adds sharp flavour.

The step that matters

Mix until smooth and well combined. Oil and vinegar separate easily, so the yolks must be thoroughly mashed and mixed with the other ingredients to form a stable, smooth emulsion rather than a greasy, split sauce.

Flavor stand-ins for the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Cucumberabout as good a flavor fit

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