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Remoulade Sauce

A sauce made with salad oil, tarragon vinegar, mustard, egg yolk, herbs, salt, pepper, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,563 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Remoulade Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herbs

  1. Blanch the herbs in boiling water for 1 minute, then dry and chop them finely.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the egg yolk, salt, and pepper in a small bowl.

  2. Stir briskly with a wooden spoon until thick.

  3. Gradually add the salad oil drop by drop, then more quickly, while stirring continuously.

  4. Add a few drops of vinegar at intervals during mixing until the desired consistency is reached.

  5. Stir in the mustard, chopped herbs, and sugar, then use the 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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Tarragon + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Tarragon + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together589 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Mustard + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together587 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw egg yolk
Emulsifies the salad oil and vinegar into a thick, stable sauce.
Salad oil
Provides the fat that forms the body and richness of the sauce.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and thins the sauce to the desired consistency.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharpness and helps stabilise the emulsion.

The step that matters

Adding the oil. Oil must be added drop by drop at first while stirring constantly, so the yolk can disperse it into tiny droplets. Adding it too fast breaks the emulsion, leaving the sauce oily and thin.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Dillfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Fennelfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against tarragon, vinegar, mustard, egg, chive, pepper, sugar. 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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