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
Chop the olives, gherkins, and capers very finely.
Add the chopped ingredients to the mayonnaise dressing. Mix well and serve with fish or cold meat dishes.
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.
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Capers + olivetop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together1,688 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Mayonnaise dressing
- Forms the creamy base that carries the flavour of the other ingredients.
- Capers
- Adds a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the richness of the dressing.
- Gherkins
- Contributes tangy acidity and a crisp texture to the sauce.
- Olives
- Adds salty, savoury depth and a little bite to the sauce.
The step that matters
Chop the olives, gherkins, and capers very finely. Fine chopping spreads the pieces evenly through the dressing so every spoonful gets a balanced mix of tang and salt, rather than large chunks clustered in places.
“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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