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Ravigote Mayonnaise

A mayonnaise-based sauce with spinach, capers, anchovies, parsley, and onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ravigote Mayonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the herb base

  1. In a mortar, combine cooked spinach, capers, chopped onion, anchovies, and parsley.

  2. Pound the mixture until well combined.

  3. Force the mixture through a fine sieve.

Finish the mayonnaise

  1. Add the strained mixture to half a recipe of mayonnaise.

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. Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Spinach + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together99 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Spinach + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,025 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Capers + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Spinach + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Adds color and a mild, earthy flavor to the sauce.
Capers
Add briny acidity that cuts through the richness of the mayonnaise.
Anchovies
Add savory depth and salt that rounds out the sauce.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green aroma and herbal brightness.
Mayonnaise
Provides the fat and emulsified base that carries the other flavors.

The step that matters

Forcing the mixture through a fine sieve. Pounding alone leaves fibrous bits of spinach and parsley that make the sauce coarse and speckled. Straining removes them, giving a smooth texture that blends evenly into the mayonnaise.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spinach, capers, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, capers, parsley. 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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