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Sauce

Devil Sauce

A savory sauce made with cold gravy, loaf sugar, lemon juice, mustard, butter, mushroom ketchup, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Devil 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 ↓

Devil Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine the cold gravy or brown stock with loaf sugar, lemon juice, mustard, and fresh butter.

  2. Heat gently while stirring until the butter melts and the mixture is well combined.

  3. Add mushroom ketchup and season with salt and pepper to taste.

  4. Adjust seasoning as needed, adding Worcestershire sauce or vinegar if desired.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Sugar + ketchuptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh butter
Melts into the sauce to add richness and a smooth, glossy body.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savoury, umami flavour that gives the sauce its character.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and gravy.
Loaf sugar
Balances the sharpness of the lemon and mustard with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Heat gently while stirring. Butter can separate or scorch if the heat is too high, so warming slowly while stirring keeps the emulsion smooth and the sauce from tasting burnt.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, butter, mushroom, ketchup, 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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