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Sauce

Sauce Tartare

A creamy sauce made with capers, olives, gherkins, egg yolk, oil, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,688 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sauce Tartare

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the capers, olives, and gherkins.

  2. Season the mixture with onion juice.

  3. In a bowl, combine the egg yolk with the oil or melted butter.

  4. Add the chopped mixture to the dressing.

  5. Season with coarse sea salt and red pepper to taste.

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. Capers + olivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Olive + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Emulsifies the oil into the dressing, giving it a thick, creamy body.
Olive oil
Provides fat that carries flavour and gives the sauce a smooth, rich texture.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the richness of the sauce.
Gherkins
Add tangy acidity and a crisp texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Combine the egg yolk with the oil or melted butter. The yolk must be whisked into the fat slowly so the oil emulsifies rather than separating. Adding oil too fast breaks the emulsion and leaves the sauce greasy and thin.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against capers, olive, egg, pepper. 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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