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Mayonnaise Tartar

A mayonnaise-based condiment with olives, capers, pickles, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Mayonnaise Tartar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mayonnaise

  1. In a bowl, combine the oil, salt, vinegar, pepper, onion juice, mustard, and egg yolks.

  2. Whisk until smooth and creamy.

  3. Stir in the sugar and mix well.

Add the garnishes

  1. Add the chopped olives, capers, pickles, and parsley last, and mix until evenly distributed.

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. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsifier that binds the oil and vinegar into a stable, creamy sauce.
Oil
Forms the bulk of the sauce and gives it its rich, smooth body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and balances the richness of the oil.
Mustard
Helps hold the emulsion together and adds a sharp, pungent note.
Capers
Add briny, acidic bursts of flavour that cut through the richness.

The step that matters

Combining the oil with the egg yolks. Oil must be incorporated slowly into the yolks and whisked so it disperses into tiny droplets; adding it too fast or unevenly can cause the emulsion to break and the sauce to separate.

Swap the onion

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

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

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