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Sauce Ravigote, Hot
Place in a mortar three anchovies in oil, two sound gherkins, one sound, medium shallot, one tablespoon freshly chopped parsley, one tablespoon chopped tarragon, half tablespoon chervil. Pound all well for five minutes, or until a fine paste; then rub through a fine sieve. Place in a small saucepan, add six tablespoons thick, hot cream; briskly whisk on the corner of the range for two minutes, then add one egg yolk; briskly stir for two minutes; add another egg yolk, briskly stir, then add another one and briskly whisk for five minutes. Remove the pan from the range; season with a good saltspoon salt and a saltspoon cayenne pepper. Stir for one minute more and serve.
A hot ravigote in the older sense: an herb-and-anchovy paste enriched with cream and egg yolks, closer to a savoury custard sauce than to the vinaigrette that now usually carries the name. Everything depends on heat control.
- The hinge: never let it boilThree yolks in six tablespoons of cream will curdle if the pan gets much above the low 180sF. "The corner of the range" means a cooler spot on a coal stove; on a modern burner use the lowest setting, or set the pan over barely simmering water and accept that it will take longer than the stated times.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. A full quarter teaspoon of cayenne in this quantity of sauce is aggressively hot by current taste; add a pinch, taste, and build.
- Salt and the anchoviesThree oil-packed anchovies plus vinegar-cured gherkins already carry a great deal of salt. Taste before adding the specified saltspoon; often none is needed.
- Gherkins"Sound gherkins" here means small vinegar-pickled cucumbers, what a supermarket now sells as cornichons. Sweet bread-and-butter pickles are not a substitute; the sauce depends on their sharpness.
- Mortar and sieveA small food processor does the five minutes of pounding in about thirty seconds. Still push the paste through a fine sieve or the sauce will be gritty with shallot and anchovy fibre.
- Chervil and tarragonThe recipe specifies "freshly chopped" only for the parsley, but chopped tarragon and chervil imply fresh herbs too. Dried chervil is close to flavourless and dried tarragon is coarse; if fresh chervil is unavailable, use a little more parsley plus a few fennel fronds rather than the dried herb.
- Yolks one at a timeThe staged addition is not fussiness. Each yolk drops the pan temperature and lets the previous one set slowly; adding all three together thickens fast and curdles faster.
- Yield and serviceMakes roughly two-thirds of a cup, enough for four small servings. It is a sauce for poached or boiled white meats, brains and sweetbreads, or boiled fish, and it is best served at once, since reheating risks curdling.
Ravigote comes from the French ravigoter, to perk up or revive, and the name has covered two quite different sauces for most of its life: a cold vinaigrette sharp with capers, onion and herbs, and a hot version built on a warm base finished with herbs, shallot and something acid. Filippini's is the hot one, though his choice of cream and egg yolks rather than the velouté-and-ravigote-butter route of the classical repertoire is characteristic of the restaurant cooking he came from — he spent decades at Delmonico's in New York, and The International Cook Book (1906) is largely a professional's book rewritten for the household. The anchovy, gherkin and fines-herbes paste is the constant across all versions; what changes is what carries it. Pounding aromatics to a paste in a mortar and forcing them through a sieve was the standard route to a smooth compound flavour before mechanical blenders, and it is the step that most clearly dates the recipe.