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Tartarre Sauce for Salmon

A cold emulsified sauce made from egg yolks, chilled salad oil, vinegar, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and optional herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Tartarre Sauce for Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chill the salad oil by placing the bottle in cold water with ice.

  2. In a three-pint stewpan, separate the yolks from the eggs.

  3. Whisk the egg yolks until smooth.

Make the sauce

  1. Slowly add the chilled salad oil while whisking continuously to emulsify.

  2. Stir in the vinegar and lemon juice.

  3. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  4. Add chopped fresh herbs if desired.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Vinegar + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Egg + vinegartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsifier that holds the oil and vinegar together as a thick, smooth sauce.
Salad oil
Provides the fat that gives the sauce its rich body and mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil.
Lemon juice
Adds further acidity and fresh citrus aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Slowly add the chilled salad oil while whisking continuously. Oil added too fast before the yolks have absorbed it cannot be dispersed into tiny droplets, so the emulsion breaks and the sauce separates. Continuous whisking and a slow pour let the lecithin in the yolks coat each droplet and keep the sauce thick.

“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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