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Plain Ravigotte Sauce

A French sauce made with tarragon vinegar, chili sauce, Harvey's sauce, butter, and herbs, served with boiled fowl or fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Plain Ravigotte Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine tarragon vinegar, chili sauce, and Harvey's sauce in a small saucepan.

  2. Bring to a boil and reduce to half the quantity.

  3. Add the butter sauce and chopped herbs, stirring well.

  4. Serve with boiled fowl or fish.

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. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tarragon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Tarragon + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together589 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Chervil + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together774 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Tarragon vinegar
Provides sharp acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the rich butter.
Butter sauce
Forms the creamy base that gives the sauce body and richness.
Chopped blanched tarragon
Adds a distinct aromatic, anise-like flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Reducing the vinegar mixture to half. Boiling concentrates the acidity and flavour of the vinegar, chili sauce and Harvey's sauce. If it is under-reduced the sauce will taste thin and sharp; if over-reduced it becomes too strong before the butter sauce is added.

Swap the parsley

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

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

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