Name: Tartare Sauce
Ingredients: 1 pint mayonnaise; 1 tablespoon mustard cauliflower pickle (Cross and Blackwell's); 1 teaspoon finely chopped onion; 1 teaspoon capers

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

1 pint mayonnaise
1 tablespoon mustard cauliflower pickle (Cross and Blackwell's)
1 teaspoon finely chopped onion
1 teaspoon capers

Directions

In a bowl, combine the mayonnaise and mustard cauliflower pickle.
Add the finely chopped onion and capers, then 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.

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.

Mustard + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together624 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Cauliflower + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together29 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Mustard + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together687 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together9,259 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,381 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: Forms the creamy base and provides fat for a smooth, rich texture.
Mustard cauliflower pickle: Adds tangy acidity and piquant flavour that cuts through the richness of the mayonnaise.
Capers: Contribute briny, acidic bursts of flavour that give the sauce its characteristic tartness.
Onion: Adds a sharp, pungent crunch and aromatic bite to the sauce.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, cauliflower, capers):

Horseradishbetter flavor fit
Shallotbetter flavor fit
Lettucebetter flavor fit
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, cauliflower, 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.