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Sauce

Remoulade, Green

A green sauce made from blanched herbs, mustard, egg yolk, olive oil, vinegar, and optional parsley or spinach juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

Remoulade, Green

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herbs

  1. Blanch the chervil, chives, pimpernel, and tarragon in boiling water for 1 minute.

  2. Squeeze the herbs in a cloth until dry.

Make the sauce

  1. Pound the herbs in a mortar with the mustard, salt, and cayenne or white pepper.

  2. Beat in the egg yolk.

  3. Gradually add the olive oil, first by drops, then by teaspoonfuls.

  4. Stir in the vinegar.

  5. Pass the sauce through a fine sieve.

  6. If needed, add a few drops of parsley or spinach juice for color.

Variation

  1. For variation, pound and mix in shallot, parsley, young onions, and capers instead of the herbs.

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 + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together370 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tarragon + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Chive + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together589 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Chive + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together587 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw egg yolk
Emulsifies the oil and vinegar, giving the sauce its thick, creamy body.
Olive oil
Forms the bulk of the emulsion, providing richness and a smooth, thick texture.
Made mustard
Helps stabilize the emulsion and adds sharp flavor that balances the oil.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich oil and egg yolk.
Chervil
Contributes fresh, herbal aroma and the sauce's green color.
Tarragon
Adds its distinctive aromatic, slightly anise-like flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the olive oil. Oil must be added slowly, first by drops, so the egg yolk can emulsify it. Adding it too fast breaks the emulsion, leaving the sauce oily and thin instead of thick.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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