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Chervil Sauce

A savory sauce made with mushrooms, herbs, shallots, and wine, simmered in butter and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Chervil and tarragon 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 ↓

Chervil Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and add the mushrooms, parsley, chervil, shallots, cloves, bay leaf, and tarragon, then let the mixture soak for a while.

Finish the sauce

  1. Add the broth, white wine, pepper, and salt.

  2. Reduce the sauce until it thickens, without skimming.

  3. Stir in the chopped, scalded chervil and warm everything together.

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. Chervil + tarragontop 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. Shallot + tarragontop 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

Butter
Carries the aromatics and adds richness and a rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Shallots
Provide a mild, sweet onion-like aroma that forms the base of the flavor.
Mushrooms
Add earthy savoriness and body as they release their flavor into the butter.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth, which balance the richness of the butter.
Broth
Forms the liquid body of the sauce, which reduces to concentrate its flavor.
Chervil
Contributes a delicate, fresh herbal aroma that is added at the end to stay bright.

The step that matters

Reduce the sauce until it thickens. Reduction evaporates water, so the flavors concentrate and the sauce thickens. Stopping too early leaves it thin and weak, while reducing too far can make it overly salty or sticky.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, parsley, chervil, shallot, tarragon, butter, white wine):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, parsley, chervil, shallot, tarragon, butter, white wine. 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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