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Dessert

Tartare Sauce

A creamy sauce made with egg yolks, olive oil, vinegar, mustard, sugar, pepper, salt, onion juice, capers, and cucumber pickle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, combine the egg yolks and olive oil.

  2. Whisk in the vinegar, mustard, sugar, pepper, salt, and onion juice until smooth.

  3. Fold in the chopped capers and cucumber pickle.

Serve

  1. Serve with fried or boiled fish, boiled tongue, fish salad, or grilled meats.

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. 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 + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 and vinegar, giving the sauce its thick, creamy body.
Olive oil
Provides fat that, emulsified with the yolks, makes the sauce rich and smooth.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Prepared mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds a sharp, pungent flavour.
Capers
Add a salty, briny bite that contrasts with the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Whisk in the vinegar, mustard, sugar, pepper, salt, and onion juice until smooth. Egg yolks and oil form an emulsion only when the oil is added gradually while whisking. Adding liquids too quickly or without enough whisking can cause the sauce to separate or stay thin rather than becoming smooth and creamy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, olive, vinegar, mustard, sugar, pepper, 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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