Name: Tartare Sauce
Ingredients: 1 cup mayonnaise; 4 olives, chopped; 2 gherkins, chopped; 2 teaspoons capers, chopped

Why it works: Olive and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,688 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tartare Sauce

Ingredients

1 cup mayonnaise
4 olives, chopped
2 gherkins, chopped
2 teaspoons capers, chopped

Directions

Combine mayonnaise, chopped olives, gherkins, and capers in a bowl.
Mix well until all ingredients are 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,688 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 that carries the other ingredients and gives the sauce its body and richness.
Olives: Add briny, salty bite that contrasts with the richness of the mayonnaise.
Gherkins: Add acidity and crunch that cut through the fat of the mayonnaise.
Capers: Contribute sharp, briny acidity and a distinctive tang.

“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.