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Ravigotte Sauce

A green herb sauce made with parsley, tarragon, chervil, spinach, shallot, mayonnaise or tartar sauce, and optional green food coloring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Ravigotte Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the herb base

  1. Wash the parsley, tarragon, chervil, and spinach.

  2. Boil the herbs and spinach in water with a pinch of baking soda and a little salt for 10 minutes.

  3. Add the finely chopped shallot to the boiling mixture.

  4. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

Finish the sauce

  1. Stir the strained mixture into the mayonnaise or tartar sauce.

  2. If the sauce is not a good green color, add some green food coloring.

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 + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together266 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tarragon + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Mayonnaise or tartar sauce
Forms the creamy base of the sauce and carries the flavor of the herbs.
Parsley
Adds fresh herbal flavor and green color to the sauce.
Tarragon
Adds a distinct anise-like aroma that suits the sauce.
Chervil
Adds a delicate, mild herbal flavor to the sauce.
Spinach
Contributes green color and a soft, smooth texture once strained.
Shallot
Adds a mild onion-like sharpness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the herbs and spinach for 10 minutes. Boiling with a little baking soda helps the greens keep a bright green color, while a long boil can dull it. Straining well afterward keeps the sauce smooth and free of fibrous bits.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, tarragon, chervil, sauce, pepper, shallot):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, tarragon, chervil, sauce, pepper, shallot. 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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