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Tartar Sauce

A creamy sauce made with egg yolks, olive oil, vinegar, pickles, capers, mustard, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Tartar Sauce

Why it works: Capers and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tartar Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, combine the egg yolks.

  2. Slowly add the olive oil while stirring constantly.

  3. Add vinegar alternately until the desired taste is achieved.

  4. Stir in chopped pickles, capers, mustard, and salt.

Serve

  1. Serve with small fish.

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. Capers + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil into the sauce, giving it a thick, creamy structure.
Olive oil
Provides the fat that, dispersed through the yolks, makes the sauce rich and smooth.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the oil.
Capers
Add a salty, sharp bite that gives the sauce its characteristic flavor.

The step that matters

Slowly add the olive oil while stirring constantly. Egg yolks can only hold oil in suspension if it is added gradually while stirring. Adding it too fast breaks the emulsion, so the sauce separates and turns greasy instead of thick and creamy.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Chivefits less well
  4. Cucumberfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, olive, vinegar, 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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