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Sauce

Dutch Sauce

A sauce made from egg yolks, lemon juice, butter, salt, nutmeg, water, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Dutch Sauce

Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Dutch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a small saucepan, combine the egg yolks, lemon juice, butter, salt, nutmeg, and water.

  2. Place the saucepan over medium heat and stir constantly until the sauce thickens and is nearly boiling.

  3. For a safer method, place the mixture in a jar and set the jar in a saucepan of boiling water, stirring constantly until thickened.

  4. Optionally, add cayenne pepper to 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they cook and set, giving it a rich, emulsified body.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the texture and helps keep the sauce smooth.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the yolks and butter.

The step that matters

Thickening over heat. Egg yolks set when heated, but if they get too hot they can scramble and curdle. Stirring constantly and gently heating the mixture, or using a jar set in boiling water, keeps the heat even so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, lemon, butter, pepper. 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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