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Sauce

Sauce Remoulade

A tangy sauce made with anchovies, capers, parsley, mustard, oil, vinegar, and optional garlic.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sauce Remoulade

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix together the chopped anchovies and capers.

  2. Add the chopped parsley, dry mustard, and salt and pepper to taste.

  3. Combine the mixture with salad oil and a few drops of vinegar.

  4. Optionally, add a pinch of garlic.

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. Capers + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Capers + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together834 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

Anchovies
Adds a salty, savory depth that gives the sauce its characteristic flavor.
Capers
Add briny acidity and a sharp bite that cuts through the richness of the oil.
Dry mustard
Adds pungency and sharpness, and helps the oil and vinegar stay blended.
Salad oil
Provides the fat that carries the flavors and gives the sauce a smooth body.

Swap the garlic

The recipe marks garlic as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (capers, parsley, mustard, pepper, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against capers, parsley, mustard, pepper, 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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