Skip to main content
Salad

Sauce Tartare

A sauce made with mustard, egg yolks, olive oil, vinegar, lemon juice, olives, onion, pickles, parsley, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sauce Tartare

Ingredients

Directions

Make the emulsion

  1. In a bowl, mix the mustard, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Add the egg yolks and stir until well combined.

  3. Gradually add the olive oil, starting with a few drops while beating constantly.

  4. Thin the mixture with vinegar.

  5. Add the lemon juice.

Chill and finish

  1. Chill thoroughly before serving.

  2. Just before serving, fold in the olives, onion, pickles, parsley, and remaining lemon juice.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and water in the sauce, giving it a thick, creamy body.
Olive oil
Forms the bulk of the sauce and gives it richness and body when emulsified.
Mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds sharp, pungent flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the oil.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and fresh flavour that cuts through the richness of the oil.
Olives
Add briny, salty flavour and a chopped texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the olive oil gradually. Oil must be added a few drops at a time while beating constantly so the yolks can emulsify it. Adding it too fast breaks the emulsion, leaving the sauce oily and separated.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  2. Broccolibetter flavor fit
  3. Lettucebetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, egg, olive, pepper, vinegar, parsley, lemon. 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).

“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.

More tartar sauce recipes

Hot 3 See all 158 →

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes