Skip to main content
Sauce

Russian Sauce

A creamy sauce made from watercress, parsley, chives, gherkins, egg yolks, anchovies, capers, garlic, butter, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Watercress and capers share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 60 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Russian Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pound together watercress, parsley, chives, gherkins, egg yolks, anchovies, capers, and garlic.

  2. Add the same weight of butter and work into a paste.

  3. Add lemon juice until smooth and creamy.

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. Watercress + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together60 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Watercress + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Chive + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Chive + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,149 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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, binding the herbs and yolks into a smooth, creamy paste.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with the butter and herbs, giving the sauce a creamy, thick body.
Anchovies
Add a salty, savoury depth that rounds out the herbs and capers.
Capers
Add sharp, briny acidity that brightens the rich butter.
Gherkins
Add tangy acidity and a crisp, briny bite to the sauce.

The step that matters

Working the butter into the paste. Butter must be worked in gradually so it emulsifies with the pounded herbs and yolks; adding it too fast or too cold can leave the sauce greasy and split rather than smooth and creamy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (watercress, parsley, chive, egg, capers, garlic, butter):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against watercress, parsley, chive, egg, capers, garlic, butter. 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.

You might also like

Hot Lemon Cream SauceHot Lemon Cream Sauce11 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes