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Sauce

Sauce Tartare

A creamy sauce made with vinegar, butter, eggs, whipped cream, capers, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sauce Tartare

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, combine vinegar, melted butter, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Beat the eggs separately and add the yolks to the mixture.

  3. Cook over low heat until it thickens, then remove from heat and let cool.

Finish

  1. Once cool, fold in the whipped cream and add capers to taste.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Pepper + caperstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Butter + caperstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + caperstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,453 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the sauce on gentle heat and help bind the butter into it.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, silky body.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that cuts through the richness of the eggs and butter.
Whipped cream
Adds lightness and a soft texture when folded in after cooling.

The step that matters

Cooking the yolks over low heat. Egg yolks set and can curdle or scramble if they get too hot too fast. Gentle heat and constant stirring let them thicken evenly into a smooth sauce.

Swap the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, butter, pepper, egg, cream):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, butter, pepper, egg, cream. 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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