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Chervil Sauce

A sauce made with mushrooms, parsley, chervil, shallots, tarragon, cloves, bay leaf, butter, broth, white wine, pepper, and salt.

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

Chervil Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the mushrooms, parsley, chervil, shallots, and tarragon leaves.

  2. In a pan, melt the butter and add the chopped ingredients, cloves, and bay leaf. Let them soak for a while.

  3. Add the broth, white wine, pepper, and salt.

  4. Reduce the mixture to a proper thickness without skimming.

  5. Stir in some scalded and chopped chervil and warm it all together.

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 + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together266 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Shallot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 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

Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and body to the sauce as they cook down.
Shallots
Add a mild onion-like sweetness and aroma as they soften in butter.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and adds richness to the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and depth, helping to build the sauce's flavor as it reduces.
Broth
Provides the liquid base that reduces into the body of the sauce.

The step that matters

Reduce the mixture to a proper thickness without skimming. Reducing concentrates flavor and thickens the liquid through evaporation. Skimming is not included in this method, so the cook must judge thickness by eye while the sauce reduces gently.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, parsley, chervil, shallot, tarragon, butter, white wine):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, parsley, chervil, shallot, tarragon, butter, white wine. 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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