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Sauce Tartare

A mayonnaise-based condiment with mustard, parsley, pickle, capers, and onion juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 624 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sauce Tartare

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, combine the mayonnaise dressing, mustard, minced parsley, chopped pickle, minced capers, and onion juice.

  2. Beat the mixture for one minute until well combined.

Serve

  1. Serve in a sauceboat.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Mustard + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,259 recipes

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

  4. Capers + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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 that carries all the other flavors.
Mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavor that cuts through the richness of the dressing.
Capers
Add briny, sharp acidity that brightens the sauce.
Chopped pickle
Adds acidity and a crunchy texture to the sauce.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  2. Horseradishbetter flavor fit
  3. Lettucebetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, parsley, capers. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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