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Sauce

Dutch Sauce

A sauce made with onion, horseradish, anchovies, elder vinegar, stock, and eggs.

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

Why it works: Onion and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,784 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Dutch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a stewpan, combine the sliced onion, horseradish, anchovies, elder vinegar, and second stock.

  2. Boil for 10 minutes, then strain through a fine sieve.

  3. Return the strained mixture to the stewpan.

  4. Make a liaison with the eggs and add to the sauce.

  5. Heat on the fire until it comes to a boil.

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. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Egg + horseradishtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together694 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Vinegar + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Vinegar and egg 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

Eggs
Thicken the sauce when a liaison is stirred in and heated, giving it body.
Anchovies
Add savoury depth that rounds out the sharpness of the vinegar.
Elder vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sauce and balances the richness of the eggs.
Fresh horseradish
Contributes pungent heat and aroma to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the liaison. Egg yolks thicken by gently coagulating. If the sauce is too hot when the liaison goes in, or it is allowed to boil hard afterward, the eggs can scramble and turn grainy instead of smoothly thickening the sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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