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Tarragon Sauce

A sauce made from tarragon leaves, water, butter, flour, sherry, vinegar, lemon juice, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Tarragon Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tarragon

  1. Pick and wash the tarragon leaves.

  2. Put the leaves in a saucepan with water and stew until tender.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pan, warm the reserved tarragon water, butter, and flour together.

  2. Add sherry or Madeira, tarragon vinegar or lemon juice, and sugar to the mixture.

  3. Stir until well combined and heated through.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Tarragon + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together788 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Tarragon + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,572 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Tarragon leaves
Provide the main herbal aroma and flavour of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the sauce becomes smooth and coats the spoon.
Sherry or madeira
Adds depth and a mellow wine flavour to the sauce.
Tarragon vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter mixture. Flour must be cooked smoothly into the warm butter and liquid while stirring, otherwise it forms lumps that a sieve cannot easily fix. Keeping the mixture stirred and gently heated lets starch swell evenly, giving a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the tarragon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, sherry, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Tarragonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sherry, sugar. 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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