Name: Sauce Emmanuel
Ingredients: 1 cup mayonnaise; 1 teaspoon mustard; tarragon (to taste); parsley (to taste); fine celery leaves (to taste); chervil (to taste); chives (to taste); 2-3 drops Tabasco sauce; lemon juice (to taste)

Why it works: Tarragon and chervil 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 ↓

Sauce Emmanuel

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, mix the mayonnaise with the mustard until well combined.
Finely chop the tarragon, parsley, celery leaves, chervil, and chives.
Stir the chopped herbs into the mayonnaise mixture until the sauce is green.
Add 2-3 drops of Tabasco sauce and a little lemon juice to taste.
Mix well and adjust seasoning as needed.

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.

Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together824 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Chervil + chivetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together370 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Tarragon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,563 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Mustard + tarragontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together901 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Mayonnaise: Forms the creamy base that carries the other flavours and gives the sauce its body.
Mustard: Adds sharpness and helps emulsify the sauce so it stays smooth.
Tarragon: Provides the sauce's characteristic anise-like aroma.
Chives: Adds a mild onion-like freshness and colour to the herb mix.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, tarragon, parsley, celery, chervil, chive, sauce):

Lemonthe original
Limefits about as well
Avocadofits about as well
Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, tarragon, parsley, celery, chervil, chive, sauce. 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.