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Tartar Sauce

A creamy sauce made with vinegar, lemon juice, salt, Worcestershire sauce, and melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Tartar Sauce

Why it works: Sauce and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Tartar Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine vinegar, lemon juice, salt, and Worcestershire sauce.

  2. Melt the butter and slowly mix it into the bowl until well combined.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Vinegar + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Vinegar + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Vinegar + saucetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,844 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body that carries the other flavors.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the sauce and cuts through the richness of the butter.
Lemon juice
Adds fresh, citrusy acidity that lifts the flavor and balances the butter.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savory depth from fermented and aged ingredients.

The step that matters

Slowly mixing in the melted butter. Adding warm melted butter gradually lets it disperse evenly into the acidic liquid, so the sauce turns smooth rather than greasy or separated.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Grapefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sauce, butter. 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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