Name: Ravigotte, a French Salad Sauce
Ingredients: 1 teaspoon mushroom ketchup; 1 teaspoon caviar; 1 teaspoon chili vinegar; 1 teaspoon Reading sauce; 2 tablespoons butter; 3 tablespoons thick béchamel; 1 tablespoon minced parsley; 3 tablespoons cream; salt and pepper to taste

Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Ravigotte, a French Salad Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Scald the parsley, then mince the leaves very finely.

Combine and serve

In a bowl, combine the minced parsley with all the other ingredients.
Mix everything together thoroughly until well combined.
The sauce is now ready for use.

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.

Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,099 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,787 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Caviar + buttertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together107 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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, rounded body to the sauce.
Thick béchamel: Provides thickness and body so the sauce clings to food.
Cream: Adds moisture and a silky texture that softens the sharper flavours.
Chili vinegar: Adds acidity and sharp heat that brightens the richer ingredients.
Mushroom ketchup: Adds savoury, umami depth that rounds out the sauce.
Parsley: Adds fresh herbal flavour and green colour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Scalding the parsley. A brief scald helps the parsley keep its bright green colour. Prolonged heat breaks down chlorophyll, which turns the herb dull and olive-brown and can make its flavour taste flat.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, ketchup, caviar, vinegar, sauce, butter, cream):

Tarragonfits better
Capersfits better
Garlicfits about as well
Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, ketchup, caviar, vinegar, sauce, butter, cream. 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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Ravigotte, a French Salad Sauce