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Sauce

Tarragon Sauce

A sauce made with butter, white sauce, blanched tarragon, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Tarragon Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tarragon

  1. Blanch the tarragon by washing sprigs in cold water and picking off the leaves.

  2. Cover the leaves with cold water, add a small piece of salt and a tiny piece of baking soda.

  3. Bring the water to a boil, then strain and press out the moisture from the leaves.

  4. Rub the leaves through a sieve or chop them finely.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the tarragon with ½ oz. of butter and add to ½ pint of white sauce.

  2. Bring the sauce to a boil.

  3. Beat the egg yolk and pour the sauce over it, avoiding heat to prevent curdling.

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. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sauce + tarragontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together566 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + tarragontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,572 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  5. Tarragon + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,789 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the sauce.
White sauce
Forms the creamy base that carries the tarragon flavour.
Blanched tarragon
Provides the herbal, aromatic flavour that defines the sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce, giving it body and a silky texture.

The step that matters

Adding the sauce to the egg yolk. Egg yolk proteins set and scramble when heated quickly, causing curdling. Beating the yolk and pouring the hot sauce over it gradually, while avoiding further heat, keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the tarragon

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Tarragonthe original
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce, egg. 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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