Name: Tartar Sauce
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons browned butter; 1½ tablespoons Worcestershire sauce; 1 tablespoon lemon juice

Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and 15,338 recipes mention both. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Tartar Sauce

Ingredients

2 tablespoons browned butter
1½ tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Directions

Combine browned butter, Worcestershire sauce, and lemon juice in a bowl, and mix well until fully blended.

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.

Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Sauce + lemontop 30% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together6,598 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce share little aroma chemistry, yet 15,338 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Browned butter: Adds rich fat and a nutty, toasted flavor that carries the sauce.
Worcestershire sauce: Adds savory depth and salty, umami notes.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the butter.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

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

Coconutbetter flavor fit
Avocadobetter flavor fit
Peachabout as good a flavor fit
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce. 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.