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Sauce

Tartar Sauce

A creamy sauce made with egg yolks, oil, mustard, lemon juice, onion juice, capers, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Tartar Sauce

Why it works: Capers and mustard 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 ↓

Tartar Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, combine the egg yolks and salt.

  2. Slowly whisk in the oil to create a mayonnaise consistency.

  3. Add the onion juice, lemon juice, and mustard, mixing well.

  4. Fold in the chopped capers last.

Serve

  1. Serve chilled.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Capers + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Lemon + caperstop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. 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

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil to form a thick, mayonnaise-like base.
Oil
Provides fat that gives the sauce its rich, creamy body.
Capers
Add briny, tangy bits that contrast with the rich base.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the fat.
Mustard
Contributes sharpness and helps stabilise the emulsion.

The step that matters

Slowly whisk in the oil. Adding oil too fast before the yolks can absorb it will break the emulsion, leaving a greasy, separated sauce instead of a thick mayonnaise-like consistency.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  2. Horseradishbetter flavor fit
  3. Kalebetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, lemon, capers, pepper, mustard. 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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