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Sauce

Rémoulade

A creamy sauce made from hard‑boiled egg yolks, raw yolk, lemon juice, oil, vinegar, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 859 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Rémoulade

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, pound the hard-boiled egg yolks with the dry ingredients.

  2. Add the raw egg yolk and mix well.

  3. Stir in the lemon juice and vinegar gradually.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, sugar, and mustard to taste.

  5. Mix until smooth and thick, resembling a sharp sauce.

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. Shallot + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mash into a smooth base that gives the sauce body and thickness.
Raw egg yolk
Adds richness and emulsifying power to bind the oil and acid together.
Oil
Provides fat that, emulsified with the yolks, gives the sauce its creamy texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the yolks and oil.
Shallot
Contributes a mild, sharp onion aroma and flavour.

The step that matters

Add the oil and acid gradually while mixing. Egg yolks can emulsify oil and liquid only when the liquid is added slowly while mixing. Adding too much at once can split the sauce into a greasy, runny mixture instead of a smooth, thick one.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, shallot, cream, vinegar, pepper, sugar, mustard):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, shallot, cream, vinegar, pepper, sugar, mustard. 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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