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Tartare Sauce

A creamy sauce made with egg yolks, mayonnaise, mustard, lemon juice, tarragon vinegar, olive oil, capers, chives, parsley, and gherkins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 624 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tartare Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, blend the raw egg yolk and hard-boiled egg yolk with the olive oil.

  2. Add the mustard, lemon juice, and tarragon vinegar, mixing well.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the chopped capers, chives, parsley, and gherkins, mincing them finely.

  2. Press the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Serve with jellied fish, fried fish, or salads.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Mustard + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Tarragon + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together379 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mustard + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Lemon + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,137 recipes

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

  5. 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
Provides a creamy, emulsified base that carries the other flavours.
Raw egg yolk
Helps bind the oil and other liquids into a smooth emulsion.
Hard-boiled egg yolk
Adds body and a rich, mellow texture to the sauce.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce its smooth body.
French mustard
Helps emulsify the sauce and adds a sharp, tangy bite.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and cuts the richness.

The step that matters

Blending the egg yolks with the olive oil. Oil must be incorporated gradually so the yolks can emulsify it. Adding it too quickly can make the sauce split or turn greasy, leaving it separated instead of smooth and thick.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, mustard, tarragon, vinegar, olive, pepper, capers):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, tarragon, vinegar, olive, pepper, capers. 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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