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Green Remoulade Sauce

A cold sauce made from blended herbs, egg yolks, vinegar, oil, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

Green Remoulade Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herbs

  1. Wash the herbs in cold water.

  2. Boil the herbs in salted water for 2 minutes, then drain.

  3. Place the herbs in cold water for a moment, then drain again.

  4. Rub the herbs through a sieve using a potato masher.

Make and serve the sauce

  1. Mix the herb puree with the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs, vinegar, salad oil, salt, and pepper.

  2. Keep the sauce very cold until served.

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. Tarragon + cherviltop 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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Tarragon + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together589 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Chervil + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together774 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Emulsify with the oil and vinegar to give the sauce a thick, creamy body.
Salad oil
Adds richness and smooth texture as it emulsifies with the yolks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the herbs and balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Tarragon
Provides the aromatic, slightly anise-like flavour central to the sauce.

The step that matters

Drain the herbs thoroughly after boiling and cold-water rinsing. Excess water dilutes the emulsion of yolks and oil, making the sauce thin and prone to separating. Blanching briefly and rinsing in cold water keeps the herbs bright green while removing bitterness and enzyme activity that would dull colour.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tarragon, chervil, parsley, chive, egg, vinegar, pepper. 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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