Name: Sauce Tartars
Ingredients: few grains cayenne pepper; 2 egg yolks; 2 tablespoons vinegar; ½ cup oil; 1 tablespoon finely chopped capers; 1 tablespoon finely chopped pickles; ½ tablespoon finely chopped olives; ½ tablespoon finely chopped parsley; ½ tablespoon finely chopped chives

Why it works: Capers and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 245 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sauce Tartars

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, mix mustard, salt, and cayenne pepper.
Add the egg yolks and mix well.
Gradually add the vinegar and then the oil, stirring continuously.
As the mixture thickens, add the remaining vinegar.
Before serving, stir in the capers, pickles, olives, parsley, and chives.

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.

Capers + chivetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together245 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,550 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,150 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Capers + olivetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,688 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the chive

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, egg, vinegar, capers, olive, parsley):

Shallotbetter flavor fit
Mustardabout as good a flavor fit
Chivethe original
Lettuceabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, egg, vinegar, capers, olive, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).