Name: Tartar Sauce
Ingredients: ½ pint mayonnaise dressing; 1 tablespoon chopped pickles; 1 tablespoon chopped olives; 1 tablespoon chopped capers

Why it works: Olive and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,688 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tartar Sauce

Ingredients

½ pint mayonnaise dressing
1 tablespoon chopped pickles
1 tablespoon chopped olives
1 tablespoon chopped capers

Directions

In a bowl, combine the mayonnaise dressing with the chopped pickles, olives, and capers.
Mix well until all ingredients are thoroughly combined.

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.

Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,688 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Mayonnaise dressing: Provides the creamy base and rich fat that carries the other flavours.
Chopped pickles: Add acidity and a tangy crunch to balance the richness.
Chopped olives: Add salty, briny flavour and a firm texture.
Chopped capers: Add sharp, briny flavour that brightens the sauce.

“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.