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Sauce

Sauce Tartar

A creamy sauce made with egg yolks, oil, vinegar, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 405 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sauce Tartar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the emulsion

  1. Mash the yolk of the hard boiled egg.

  2. Add the raw egg yolks, salt, and pepper; mix with a wooden spoon.

  3. Slowly add the oil while mixing to keep the sauce thick.

Finish the sauce

  1. Moisten with tarragon vinegar to taste.

  2. Stir in the chopped gherkins, capers, shallots, and parsley.

  3. Add the French mustard, cayenne pepper, and sugar; adjust salt if needed.

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 + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Capers + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tarragon + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Tarragon + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together379 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Shallot + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw egg yolks
Their lecithin helps hold the oil and water in a stable emulsion, giving the sauce body.
Hard boiled egg yolk
Mashed smooth, it adds richness and helps thicken the base of the sauce.
Oil
Forms the bulk of the sauce, giving it richness and a thick, creamy texture.
French mustard
Its emulsifiers help stabilise the sauce and add a sharp, tangy bite.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that cuts the richness of the oil and brightens the flavour.

The step that matters

Slowly add the oil while mixing. Adding oil too fast can overwhelm the yolks so the emulsion breaks and the sauce turns thin and greasy. Adding it slowly while mixing lets the droplets disperse and keeps the sauce thick.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, tarragon, vinegar, capers, shallot, 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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