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Tartare Sauce

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, milk, egg yolk, vinegar, mustard, cayenne, salt, anchovy essence, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 901 recipes mention both. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Tartare Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and blend well.

  3. Pour in the milk and bring to a boil.

  4. Stir in the egg yolk, tarragon vinegar, mixed mustard, cayenne, salt, anchovy essence, and lemon juice, then mix well and serve.

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. Tarragon + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned 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

Butter
Enriches the base and carries flavour as the roux starts.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, sauce-like base when cooked with butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the sauce once it is thickened.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and body to the sauce.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Bringing the milk to a boil. Flour needs to be heated in the fat and liquid to swell and thicken the sauce. If the sauce is not kept moving, lumps can form and the texture stays uneven.

Flavor stand-ins for the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, egg, tarragon, vinegar, pepper):

  1. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  2. Chiveabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Capsicumabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, egg, tarragon, vinegar, pepper. 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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