Name: Duxelle
Ingredients: fine herbs (parsley, chives, fennel, tarragon, chervil, shallots, onions); 2 tablespoons reduced Allemande sauce; reduced Espagnole sauce (for brown Duxelle)

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 ↓

Duxelle

Ingredients

fine herbs (parsley, chives, fennel, tarragon, chervil, shallots, onions)
2 tablespoons reduced Allemande sauce
reduced Espagnole sauce (for brown Duxelle)

Directions

Prepare fine herbs by chopping them finely.
Cook the fine herbs until tender.
Add 2 tablespoons of reduced Allemande sauce and mix well.
For a brown Duxelle, substitute with reduced Espagnole sauce.

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.

Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together824 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Chive + cherviltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together370 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Chervil + shallottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together266 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Chive + shallottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together450 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Fennel + tarragontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together134 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, chive, fennel, tarragon, chervil, shallot, sauce):

Beetrootfits better
Lettucefits better
Welsh onionfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, chive, fennel, tarragon, chervil, shallot, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.