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Sauce

Tartar Sauce

A tangy sauce made with tarragon vinegar, lemon juice, salt, Worcestershire sauce, and browned butter, served hot over broiled fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Tartar Sauce

Why it works: Tarragon and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,137 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Tartar Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a tin cup, combine tarragon vinegar, lemon juice, salt, and Worcestershire sauce.

  2. Place the cup over boiling water and stir until well mixed and hot.

  3. Slowly add the browned butter and mix well.

  4. Serve hot over broiled 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.

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.

  1. Tarragon + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Tarragon + saucetop 17% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together566 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter 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
Provides rich fat and body, forming the creamy base of the sauce.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and sharp aromatic flavor that cuts through the richness of the butter.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that balances the fat and brightens the flavor.

The step that matters

Slowly add the browned butter and mix well. Adding warm fat gradually while stirring lets it disperse into the warm acidic liquid as a smooth emulsion. Pouring it in all at once can cause it to separate and look greasy.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadoabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Cherryabout as good a flavor fit

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

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