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Sauce

Sauce Remoulade

A cold sauce made with parsley, chives, capers, anchovies, shallot, celery, oil, vinegar, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 405 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sauce Remoulade

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop parsley, chives, capers, anchovies, shallot, and celery together.

  2. Stir in oil, vinegar, and mustard until well mixed.

  3. Pour into a sauceboat and serve cold.

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. Capers + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Chive + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Capers + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Chive + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Anchovies
Add a salty, savory depth that rounds out the sauce's flavor.
Mustard
Adds sharp heat and helps bind the oil and vinegar into an emulsion.
Oil
Provides fat and a smooth, rich body that carries the other flavors.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and cuts the richness of the oil.
Capers
Contribute briny acidity and a sharp, tangy bite.

The step that matters

Stir in oil, vinegar, and mustard until well mixed. Mustard acts as an emulsifier, so the oil and vinegar stay combined. Mixing thoroughly until the sauce looks uniform keeps it from separating into a greasy layer and vinegar pool.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, chive, capers, shallot, vinegar, mustard):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, chive, capers, shallot, vinegar, 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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