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Sauce Ravigote — Ravigote Sauce

A French sauce made from shallots, vinegar, velouté, herbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Sauce Ravigote — Ravigote Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the chopped shallots and vinegar.

  2. Let the mixture reduce almost dry.

  3. Add the Veloute Sauce and boil for 10 minutes.

  4. Strain the sauce.

Finish the sauce

  1. Stir in the chopped parsley, chervil, and tarragon.

  2. Finish by adding the Venetian butter.

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. Shallot + cherviltop 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. Shallot + parsleytop 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

Shallots
Add aromatic flavour as they cook down with the vinegar into the base.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its sharp, bright character.
Veloute sauce
Forms the creamy body of the sauce, carrying the other flavours.
Venetian butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy finish when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Let the mixture reduce almost dry. Reducing the shallots and vinegar concentrates their flavour and acidity. If left too wet, the base will taste thin and sharp once the Veloute is added.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, vinegar, sauce, chervil, tarragon, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Thymefits less well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, vinegar, sauce, chervil, tarragon, butter. 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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