Skip to main content
Sauce

Piquant Sauce

A creamy sauce made with shallot, tarragon vinegar, vinegar, cream, egg, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shallot and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 602 recipes mention both. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Piquant Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Finely chop the shallot.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the tarragon vinegar and vinegar with the shallot.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the cream and bring to a gentle simmer.

  2. Whisk in the egg and cook until slightly thickened.

  3. Stir in the butter until melted and smooth.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Shallot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Shallot + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Shallot + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Thickens the sauce as it cooks gently, giving it body.
Butter
Stirred in at the end to enrich the sauce and give it a smooth, glossy finish.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the sauce stay smooth when heated.
Tarragon vinegar
Provides acidity and a sharp, aromatic flavour that defines the sauce.

The step that matters

Whisk in the egg and cook until slightly thickened. Egg proteins set as they heat, so if the sauce gets too hot or simmers hard, the egg can scramble and turn grainy. Keep the heat gentle and whisk constantly.

Flavor stand-ins for the shallot

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

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Chiveabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Mustardabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Asparagusabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against tarragon, vinegar, cream, egg, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes