Name: Tartar Sauce
Ingredients: 1 cup mayonnaise; 1 tablespoon chopped parsley; 1 tablespoon capers; 1 tablespoon gherkins; 1 teaspoon chopped onion

Why it works: Parsley and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,550 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tartar Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, combine the mayonnaise, chopped parsley, capers, gherkins, and chopped onion. Mix well until all ingredients are evenly incorporated.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,550 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Capers + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,381 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Mayonnaise: Provides the creamy base and fat that carries the flavor of the sauce.
Capers: Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the richness of the mayonnaise.
Gherkins: Add tangy acidity and a crisp texture against the smooth base.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

Shallotbetter flavor fit
Kalebetter flavor fit
Chivebetter flavor fit
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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.