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Ravigotte Sauce

A green sauce made with boiled herbs, spinach, shallot, and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Ravigotte Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the green base

  1. Wash the herbs and spinach.

  2. Boil them in water with a pinch of baking soda and a little salt for 10 minutes, along with the chopped shallot.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

Finish the sauce

  1. Stir the strained mixture into the mayonnaise sauce.

  2. If the sauce is not a good green color, add some green food coloring.

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. Chervil + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together266 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tarragon + shallottop 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

Mayonnaise
Forms the creamy base and carries the herb flavor through the sauce.
Parsley, tarragon and chervil
Supply the fresh, aromatic herb flavor that defines the sauce.
Spinach
Adds body and helps give the sauce its green color.
Shallot
Adds a mild sharp onion aroma that lifts the rich mayonnaise.
Baking soda (in the method)
Raises the water's alkalinity, helping the greens keep a bright green color while boiling.

The step that matters

Boiling the herbs and spinach. Chlorophyll turns dull olive when greens are overcooked or exposed to acid. Boiling for the stated time with baking soda keeps the color bright, so the sauce stays green once strained and mixed in.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, tarragon, chervil, sauce, pepper, shallot):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, tarragon, chervil, sauce, pepper, shallot. 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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