Name: Hot Tartare Sauce
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon butter; 4 tablespoons capers, finely chopped; 4 tablespoons olives, finely chopped; 4 tablespoons pickles, finely chopped; 4 tablespoons parsley, finely chopped; 1 teaspoon salt; ½ cup milk; 1 teaspoon lemon juice; ½ cup Mayonnaise Dressing

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 ↓

Hot Tartare Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.
Add the flour and stir to combine.
Gradually pour in the milk while stirring constantly until smooth.
Add the capers, olives, pickles, parsley, and lemon juice.
Stir in the Mayonnaise Dressing and heat until very hot, but do not let it boil.

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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,550 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,688 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,222 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,649 recipes

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

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

Swap the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, olive, parsley, milk, lemon):

Thymefits better
Tarragonfits about as well
Marjoramfits about as well
Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, olive, parsley, milk, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.