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Sauce

Green Sauce

A green herb sauce made with chives, chervil, tarragon, watercress, anchovies, egg yolks, lemon juice, and olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Chervil and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Green Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the chives, chervil, tarragon, and watercress in cold water to remove bitterness.

Make the sauce

  1. In a mortar, combine the washed herbs, egg yolks, and anchovies.

  2. Pound the mixture until smooth.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

  4. Add lemon juice and olive oil to taste, similar to making mayonnaise.

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. Chervil + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Chervil + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together59 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Chive + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together370 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Chive + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Tarragon + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together108 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Form a thick, smooth base that emulsifies with the oil and binds the herbs.
Olive oil
Adds richness and body as it emulsifies into the sauce, much like mayonnaise.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the herbs and balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Anchovies
Contribute savory depth that rounds out the flavour of the green herbs.

The step that matters

Add lemon juice and olive oil to taste. Oil must be added gradually to the yolk-herb paste so it emulsifies into a stable, smooth sauce rather than separating. Adding too much acid or oil at once can break the texture and unbalance the flavour.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chive, chervil, tarragon, watercress, egg, olive):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chive, chervil, tarragon, watercress, egg, olive. 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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