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Sauce Tartare

A mayonnaise-based condiment with capers, pickles, parsley, mustard, and lemon juice, seasoned with salt and pepper.

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

Sauce Tartare

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine mayonnaise, capers, pickles, parsley, mustard, and lemon juice, and mix well until all ingredients are thoroughly combined.

  2. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  3. Chill in the refrigerator before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Mayonnaise
Forms the creamy base, providing fat and body that carry the other flavors.
Capers
Add briny, sharp acidity that cuts through the richness of the mayonnaise.
Pickles
Add tangy acidity and a crisp texture that contrasts with the smooth base.
Dijon mustard
Adds sharpness and helps emulsify and stabilize the creamy dressing.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Kalefits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against capers, parsley, lemon, pepper. 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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