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Sauce

Remoulade

A sauce made from hard‑boiled egg yolks, mustard, salt, pepper, oil, and vinegar, with optional flavorings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 901 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Remoulade

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pound the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs until smooth.

  2. Add the mustard, salt, and cayenne or white pepper, mixing well.

  3. Gradually mix in the oil and vinegar, working the mixture together.

  4. If the sauce curdles, add the yolk of a raw egg gradually while stirring until smooth.

  5. For added flavor, mix in optional ingredients as desired.

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. Mustard + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Vinegar + tarragontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + caviartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together101 recipes

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

  5. White pepper + tarragontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together139 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

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Form the smooth base that thickens and carries the sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavor and helps emulsify the oil into the sauce.
Oil
Provides richness and body as it is mixed into the yolks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the fat.

The step that matters

Adding oil and vinegar gradually. Adding oil too quickly breaks the emulsion, so the sauce curdles. Slow addition while working the mixture lets the egg yolk hold the oil in fine droplets, keeping the sauce smooth and thick.

“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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