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Sauce

Tartar Sauce

A creamy sauce made with egg yolks, mustard, olive oil, vinegar, capers, anchovy essence, and mint.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Tartar Sauce

Why it works: Mustard and capers 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

  1. Combine the egg yolks, dry mustard, salt, and pepper in a bowl. Mix well with a wooden spoon.

  2. Gradually add the olive oil drop by drop, stirring constantly in one direction until the mixture thickens and becomes smooth.

  3. Stir in the vinegar, chopped capers, essence of anchovies, and chopped mint leaves.

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. Mustard + caperstop 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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil into the sauce and thicken it into a smooth, creamy base.
Olive oil
Provides fat that, dispersed in the yolks, makes the sauce rich and smooth.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and cuts the richness of the oil.
Capers
Add a salty, briny bite that gives the sauce its characteristic tang.

The step that matters

Adding the olive oil. If the oil goes in too fast or the mixture is not stirred constantly, the emulsion breaks and the sauce turns oily and separated instead of thick and smooth. Egg yolk lecithin needs time to surround the oil droplets, so the oil must be added slowly while stirring in one direction.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, pepper, 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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