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Butter Sauce, Tartare

A sauce made from butter, onion juice, mustard, vinegar, gherkins, capers, and egg, served with fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Butter Sauce, Tartare

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, combine the butter sauce, onion juice, mustard mixed with vinegar, gherkins, capers, and beaten egg.

  2. Stir gently to combine.

  3. Remove the sauce from heat immediately after mixing.

Serve

  1. Serve with fish.

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. Mustard + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sauce + caperstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter sauce
Forms the rich, creamy base of the sauce.
Beaten egg
Adds richness and body, helping the sauce thicken as it warms.
Gherkins
Add a sharp, briny bite that cuts through the richness.
Capers
Add a salty, tangy bite that balances the butter.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and sharpens the flavour.
Onion juice
Adds a savoury aroma and background sharpness.

The step that matters

Remove the sauce from heat immediately after mixing. Egg proteins set when heated, so lingering heat after the beaten egg is added can scramble it and leave the sauce grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce, mustard, vinegar, capers, egg. 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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