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How to Prepare Cold Mayonnaise-sauce, a LA Ragivote

A cold mayonnaise-based sauce flavored with herbs, anchovy, gherkin, capers, and shallots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

How to Prepare Cold Mayonnaise-sauce, a LA Ragivote

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herbs

  1. Boil 2 quarts of water with a little coarse sea salt.

  2. Add tarragon, pimpernel, chives, chervil, and parsley; boil for 5 minutes.

  3. Drain the herbs, plunge them into the liquid, and boil for 2 minutes.

  4. Press out the moisture, then pound the herbs with anchovy fillets, gherkin, capers, and shallots until it forms a paste.

Finish the sauce

  1. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve and mix it into prepared mayonnaise 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. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Chive + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together370 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Chervil + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovy fillets
Add salty, savoury depth that rounds out the herb flavours.
Capers
Contribute sharp acidity that cuts through the richness of the mayonnaise.
Gherkin
Adds tangy acidity and a crisp, pickled note to the sauce.
Shallots
Provide mild aromatic sharpness that blends into the paste.
Mayonnaise sauce with eggs
Provides the fatty, emulsified base that carries the flavours and gives a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Press out the moisture from the herbs. Blanched herbs hold a lot of water; if they are not pressed dry, the paste stays loose and dilutes the mayonnaise, making the sauce thin and watery.

“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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