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Potato Salad a LA Ravigote

A potato salad with mustard, oil, vinegar, tarragon, and chervil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Potato Salad a LA Ravigote

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Wash and peel the potatoes, then cook them until tender.

  2. Slice or mince the cooked potatoes and place them in an earthenware jar.

Make the dressing

  1. In a basin, dilute the egg yolks with the mustard.

  2. Add enough oil and vinegar to create a well-mixed salad dressing.

  3. Stir in the chopped tarragon and chervil.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the potatoes and mix carefully with a wooden spoon.

  2. Dish up and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Mustard + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together207 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Potato + cherviltop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together96 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Potato + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and vinegar into a thick, creamy dressing.
French mustard
Helps stabilise the dressing emulsion and adds sharp flavour.
Oil
Provides richness and body to the dressing and coats the potatoes.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the oil.
New potatoes
Form the bulk of the salad, holding their shape when sliced and cooked.

The step that matters

Cook the potatoes until tender. Potatoes that are undercooked stay firm and resist absorbing the dressing, while overcooked ones break apart when sliced or mixed. Tender, intact potatoes take up the dressing evenly.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, vinegar, tarragon, chervil. 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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