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Chervil Sauce

A light sauce made with chervil, stock, coulis, lemon juice, sugar, and Madeira.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chervil and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 358 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chervil Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Reduce the chervil

  1. Pick chervil leaves and place them in a small saucepan.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of best stock and simmer until the pan is dry.

Finish the sauce

  1. Add enough coulis to achieve the desired consistency.

  2. Squeeze in the juice of 1 lemon.

  3. Stir in 1 teaspoon of sugar and a splash of Madeira.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together358 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Chervil + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together239 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Chervil leaves
Provide the main fresh, herbal aroma and flavour of the sauce.
Best stock
Adds savoury depth, and reducing it in the pan concentrates its flavour.
Coulis
Adds body and thickness, setting the sauce's final consistency.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and sharpens the other flavours.
Sugar
Balances the acidity and rounds out the savoury and herbal notes.
Madeira
Adds a fortified wine aroma and extra depth of flavour.

The step that matters

Simmering until the pan is dry. Reducing the stock concentrates its flavour and wilts the chervil. If the pan boils dry or is left too long, the residue can scorch and turn bitter, so watch it closely and stop once the liquid has evaporated.

Swap the chervil

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Chervilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar. 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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