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Sauce Tartare

A creamy sauce made with shallot, parsley, tarragon, capers, mustard, egg yolks, vinegar, salt, pepper, and olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 405 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sauce Tartare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Finely chop the shallot, parsley, tarragon, and capers.

  2. In a bowl, combine the chopped ingredients with ground mustard, egg yolks, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

Make the sauce

  1. Slowly pour in the olive oil while stirring continuously.

  2. If the sauce is too thick, add a little more vinegar.

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. Shallot + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Capers + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Shallot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Tarragon + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together379 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Shallot + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil into the sauce, giving it a thick, creamy body.
Olive oil
Provides the fat that makes up most of the sauce's rich texture.
Capers
Add briny acidity and a sharp, salty bite that cuts through the richness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the rich oil and yolks.
Ground mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds a sharp, pungent flavour.

The step that matters

Slowly pour in the olive oil while stirring continuously. Oil must be added gradually while stirring so tiny droplets disperse and are held by the egg yolk's lecithin. Adding it too fast causes the emulsion to break, leaving a greasy, separated sauce.

Flavor stand-ins for the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Dillabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, tarragon, capers, mustard, egg, 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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