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Sauce Aux Fines Herbes--fine Herb Sauce

A French sauce made with fish stock, velouté, egg yolks, cream, herbs, butter, lemon, salt, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Chervil and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 370 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sauce Aux Fines Herbes--fine Herb Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Reduce the fish stock almost completely.

  2. Add the velouté sauce and bring to a boil.

  3. Bind the sauce with the egg yolks and cream.

  4. Stir in the chopped parsley, chervil, and chives.

  5. Finish with butter, lemon juice, salt, and cayenne pepper.

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 + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together370 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together774 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Bind the sauce and thicken it into a smooth, rich texture as they set gently with heat.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel that softens the sauce's flavor.
Butter
Adds fat for a glossy finish and a rounder, silkier texture.
Velouté sauce
Serves as the base body of the sauce, providing thickness and structure.
Fish stock
Provides concentrated savory flavor once reduced.

The step that matters

Bind the sauce with the egg yolks and cream. Egg yolks thicken by coagulating when heated, but if the sauce boils after they are added they can scramble and turn grainy. Keep the heat low and stir constantly while binding.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, sauce, egg, cream, chervil, chive, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, sauce, egg, cream, chervil, chive, 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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