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Green Sauce

A green herb sauce made with onions, parsley, tarragon, butter, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,563 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Green Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herbs

  1. Wash the parsley and onions.

  2. Boil them in a pot of salted water until just tender.

Make the sauce

  1. Drain and pound them to a paste with the butter in a mortar.

  2. Whisk this paste into the melted butter.

  3. Bring the sauce to a boil and add the tarragon vinegar.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Parsley
Adds fresh herbal flavour and the bright green colour of the sauce.
Green onions
Contribute a mild onion aroma and savoury flavour to the sauce.
Butter
Provides fat that gives the sauce its rich body and smooth texture.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens and sharpens the rich butter.

The step that matters

Boil the herbs until just tender. Brief cooking softens the herbs while keeping their colour bright. Prolonged boiling breaks down chlorophyll, turning the green dull and olive, which dulls the finished sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tarragon, butter, parsley, 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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