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Tartar Sauce

A mayonnaise-based condiment with finely chopped cucumber pickles, olives, capers, and onion.

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

Why it works: Cucumber and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 303 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tartar Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Finely chop the cucumber pickles, olives, capers, and onion.

  2. Stir the chopped ingredients into the mayonnaise.

  3. Serve the tartar sauce on meat.

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. Cucumber + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cucumber + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Capers + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mayonnaise
Forms the creamy base that carries the other ingredients.
Cucumber pickles
Adds crunch and a sharp, tangy bite.
Sour olives
Adds salty, tangy flavor and a briny note.
Capers
Adds a sharp, briny burst of flavor.
Onion
Adds sharpness and aromatic bite.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, olive, capers):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, olive, capers. 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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