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Sauce

Mousseline Sauce for Salmon or Fish

A green sauce made from spinach or watercress, egg yolks, cream, and tarragon vinegar, whisked over low heat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 112 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mousseline Sauce for Salmon or Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the puree

  1. Rinse the spinach or watercress.

  2. Pound it in a mortar and rub it through a fine sieve to make a puree.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the green puree, egg yolks, cream, and vinegar.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Whisk over low heat until it becomes a light froth.

  4. Serve immediately.

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 + spinachtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together112 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Set gently when heated, thickening and enriching the sauce into a light emulsion.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the sauce's texture.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and a sharp herbal note that balances the rich yolks.
Spinach or watercress
Contributes the green color and a fresh, slightly bitter flavor.

The step that matters

Whisk over low heat until it becomes a light froth.. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot, so gentle heat and constant whisking let them thicken smoothly and trap air into a froth.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, tarragon, vinegar, cream, pepper):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, tarragon, vinegar, cream, pepper. 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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