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Wasabi Tartar Sauce

"A great, easy spicy sauce for tuna, crab cakes, or even shrimp cocktail! For those who like a little spice!"

By allrecipes · From Open Recipes · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Wasabi and mustard share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 17 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

The recipe

1 1/4 cups
Prep15 min

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. In a small bowl, mix the wasabi powder with a splash of water to form a smooth paste, then let it stand for 5 minutes.

  2. In a medium bowl, whisk the mayonnaise, sour cream and prepared Dijon-style mustard until smooth.

  3. Stir the wasabi paste into the mayonnaise mixture until fully combined.

  4. Add the hot pepper sauce and chopped green onion and stir to distribute evenly.

  5. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  6. Cover and refrigerate for at least 10 minutes before serving so the flavors blend.

By allrecipes. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Wasabi + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together17 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mustard + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,243 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together15,427 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Cream + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,786 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wasabi, cream, mustard, pepper, sauce):

  1. Horseradishbetter flavor fit
  2. Lettucebetter flavor fit
  3. Capsicumabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wasabi, cream, mustard, pepper, sauce. 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).