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Sauce

Sauce Tartare

Sauce Tartare is a creamy condiment made with egg yolks, vinegar, mustard, parsley, cayenne, and optional bouquet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sauce Tartare

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a small bowl, combine the egg yolks, vinegar, and salt.

  2. Whisk the mixture quickly until it forms a creamy consistency.

  3. Gradually add the oil drop by drop, mixing well.

  4. Incorporate the mustard, parsley, and cayenne, mixing thoroughly.

  5. Add Tournade's Kitchen Bouquet for improved flavor, if desired.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Vinegar + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

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

  4. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

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

  5. Egg + mustardtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,210 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify with the oil and thicken the sauce into a creamy body.
Oil
Adds richness and fat that, emulsified with the yolks, gives the sauce its body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the oil.
Mustard
Contributes sharpness and helps stabilise the emulsion.

The step that matters

Adding the oil drop by drop. Egg yolks can only hold oil in suspension when it is added slowly while whisking. Adding it too fast breaks the emulsion, leaving the sauce oily and thin instead of creamy.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vinegar, mustard. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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