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Sauce

Sauce Tartare

A sauce made with oil dressing, olives, pickles, capers, parsley, and optional tarragon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Sauce Tartare

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine the oil dressing with chopped olives, pickles, capers, and parsley.

  2. If desired, substitute tarragon for lemon in the dressing.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Capers + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together379 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Tarragon + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Oil dressing
Provides the fat and moisture that carry the flavours of the other ingredients.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity that brightens the sauce.
Pickles
Add acidity and a crisp bite that cut through the richness of the oil.
Olives
Add salty, savoury flavour and a little richness.
Parsley
Adds a fresh, green aroma.

Swap the tarragon

The recipe marks tarragon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, capers, parsley, lemon):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Tarragonthe original
  3. Dillfits about as well
  4. Fennelfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, capers, parsley, lemon. 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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