Name: Tartare Sauce
Ingredients: mayonnaise sauce; 1 teaspoon French mustard; finely minced gherkins; 1 teaspoon anchovy essence; chopped chives; chopped spring onions; tarragon leaves; chervil leaves

Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 824 recipes mention both. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tartare Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare mayonnaise sauce.
Add French mustard, minced gherkins, anchovy essence, chives, spring onions, tarragon, and chervil, then mix well to combine all ingredients.

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.

Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together824 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Chive + cherviltop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together370 recipes

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

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together901 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Chive + tarragontop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together589 recipes

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

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together587 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Mayonnaise sauce: Provides the fatty, creamy base that carries the other flavours.
French mustard: Adds sharp, pungent flavour that cuts the richness of the mayonnaise.
Finely minced gherkins: Add acidity and a crisp, tangy bite.
Anchovy essence: Adds a savoury, salty depth of flavour.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, mustard, anchovy, chive, tarragon, chervil):

Shallotbetter flavor fit
Lettucebetter flavor fit
Horseradishbetter flavor fit
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, mustard, anchovy, chive, tarragon, chervil. 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.