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Sauce

Tartare Sauce

A sauce made with egg yolks, salad oil, vinegar, mustard, gherkins, salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Tartare Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a small bowl, lightly beat the vinegar and egg yolks together.

  2. Slowly add the salad oil drop by drop while stirring continuously.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and butter.

  4. Stir in the finely chopped gherkins.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled salmon, cold fish, or lobsters.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 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

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil into the vinegar, giving the sauce its thick, creamy body.
Salad oil
Forms the bulk of the sauce, adding richness and smooth texture when emulsified.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil.
Gherkins
Add tangy crunch and acidity to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly. Oil must be added drop by drop while stirring so it disperses into the egg yolk mixture as tiny droplets. Adding it too quickly causes the emulsion to break, leaving the sauce greasy and separated.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Cucumberfits about as well

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