Name: Tartare Sauce
Ingredients: ½ pint mayonnaise dressing; 1 teaspoon English mustard; 1 tablespoon minced parsley; 1 teaspoon chopped cucumber pickles; 1 teaspoon chopped capers; 10 drops onion juice

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 ↓

Tartare Sauce

Ingredients

½ pint mayonnaise dressing
1 teaspoon English mustard
1 tablespoon minced parsley
1 teaspoon chopped cucumber pickles
1 teaspoon chopped capers
10 drops onion juice

Directions

Make the sauce

In a bowl, combine mayonnaise dressing and English mustard paste made with a little oil.
Add minced parsley, chopped cucumber pickles, chopped capers, and onion juice. Stir all ingredients well together.

Serve

Serve in a pitcher, bowl, or sauceboat with a small ladle or spoon.

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.

Mustard + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together624 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,550 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Cucumber + caperstop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together303 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Mustard + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,281 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,259 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

Mayonnaise dressing: Forms the creamy base and provides fat for a smooth, rich texture.
English mustard: Adds sharp heat and a tangy bite that cuts through the richness.
Cucumber pickles: Contribute acidity and a crisp texture to the sauce.
Capers: Add briny, sharp acidity and a salty punch.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, parsley, cucumber, capers):

Shallotfits better
Lettucefits better
Horseradishfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, parsley, cucumber, 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.