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Sauce

Provencals Sauce

A sauce made from egg yolks, anchovies, capers, herbs, garlic, oil, vinegar, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Provencals Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pound the egg yolks with anchovies, capers, tarragon, chervil, burnet, parsley, garlic, pepper, and salt.

  2. Add salad oil and tarragon vinegar, then rub through a fine sieve with a wooden spoon.

  3. Stir in a little lemon juice and serve.

  4. For fish salads, add chopped parsley.

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. Capers + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Capers + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together379 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Tarragon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Hard-boiled yolks form the thick, smooth body of the sauce and carry the emulsion.
Salad oil
Forms the emulsion with the yolks, giving the sauce its rich, creamy texture.
Anchovies
Add a deep, salty savoury note that rounds out the sauce.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich yolk and oil and sharpens the flavour.
Capers
Contribute briny, acidic bursts that cut through the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Rubbing through the sieve. Pressing the pounded yolks through a fine sieve breaks down lumps and fibres so the oil emulsifies into a smooth sauce. Skipping or rushing this leaves it grainy and unevenly textured.

“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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