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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 into a frothy consistency.

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 greens

  1. Rinse the spinach or watercress and pound it in a mortar.

  2. Rub the pounded greens through a fine sieve to make a puree.

Make the sauce

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

  2. Season with salt and whisk over low heat until it becomes a light froth.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + spinachtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Vinegar + spinachtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together866 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Tarragon + creamtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together574 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify and thicken the sauce as they are gently heated, giving it body and richness.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the sauce's texture.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich yolk and cream base.
Spinach or watercress
Provides the green colour and a fresh, herbal flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Whisk over low heat until a light froth. Egg yolks thicken when gently heated but scramble if the heat is too high. Low heat and constant whisking keep the sauce smooth and airy.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, tarragon, vinegar, 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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