Name: Sauce Tartare
Ingredients: ½ cup mayonnaise; 1 tablespoon chopped salad herbs; ¼ onion, minced; a few chopped capers; 1 teaspoon prepared mustard; salt; pepper

Why it works: Capers and mustard 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 ↓

Sauce Tartare

Ingredients

Directions

Combine mayonnaise, chopped salad herbs, minced onion, chopped capers, and prepared mustard in a bowl, then mix all ingredients thoroughly.
Serve as a condiment.

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.

Capers + mustardtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together624 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,259 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,381 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mayonnaise: Provides the creamy fat and moisture that forms the sauce's base.
Prepared mustard: Adds sharp flavor and its emulsifiers help keep the sauce smooth.
Capers: Add briny, acidic bursts of flavor that cut through the richness.
Onion: Adds sharp aroma and a pungent bite.