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Green Sauce

A green sauce made from chives, chervil, tarragon, watercress, anchovies, egg yolks, lemon juice, and olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Chervil and tarragon 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 ↓

Green Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herbs

  1. Wash the chives, chervil, tarragon, and watercress in cold water to remove any bitterness.

Make the sauce

  1. In a mortar, combine the washed herbs, egg yolks, and anchovies.

  2. Pound the mixture until well combined.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

  4. Mix in the lemon juice and olive oil, similar to making mayonnaise.

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. Chervil + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Chervil + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together59 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Chive + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Tarragon + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together108 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

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Emulsify with the oil and thicken the sauce into a smooth, creamy texture.
Olive oil
Provides fat that, emulsified with the yolks, gives the sauce body and richness.
Anchovies
Add savory depth and salty umami that rounds out the herbs.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the herbs and balances the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Mix in the lemon juice and olive oil. Oil must be added slowly to the yolk and herb paste so it emulsifies rather than separating. Adding it too fast breaks the sauce into a greasy, loose mixture, as in mayonnaise.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chive, chervil, tarragon, watercress, egg, olive):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chive, chervil, tarragon, watercress, egg, olive. 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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