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Sauce

Tartare Sauce

A sauce made from mushrooms, onion, butter, wheatmeal, pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By T. R. Allinson · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Tartare Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cook the mushrooms and onion, chopped fine, in 1/2 pint of water for 15 minutes; adding the butter and seasoning.

  2. Strain the sauce and return it to the saucepan, thicken it with the wheatmeal, add the lemon juice, let it simmer 2 or 3 minutes, and serve.

By T. R. Allinson. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Onion + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Allinson fine wheatmeal
Starch that swells in the hot liquid and thickens the sauce.
Onion
Cooks down in the water to add savoury, aromatic flavour to the sauce.
Mushrooms (in the method)
Release their savoury flavour into the cooking liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Thickening with the wheatmeal. Wheatmeal is a starch that only thickens when heated in liquid. Stirring it in evenly prevents lumps, and a short simmer lets the starch swell fully and cook out any raw floury taste.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, lemon):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Spinachbetter flavor fit
  3. Kalebetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, 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.

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