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Tartare Sauce

A creamy sauce made with egg yolks, olive oil, lemon juice, capers, shallots, onions, cucumber pickles, parsley, salt, pepper, dry mustard, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 405 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tartare Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the emulsion

  1. In a bowl, break the yolks of two eggs.

  2. Slowly stir in one cup of olive oil, drop by drop, until the mixture is stiff.

Season and add the chopped ingredients

  1. Add the juice of half a lemon, salt, pepper, dry mustard, and cayenne.

  2. Mix in the chopped capers, shallot, onion, cucumber pickles, and parsley.

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.

  1. Capers + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mustard + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mustard + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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 and water in the lemon juice, giving the sauce its thick, stiff body.
Olive oil
Provides the fat that gives the sauce its rich texture and body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances the oil.
Capers
Add briny, sharp flavor and a bit of texture throughout the sauce.
Cucumber pickles
Add tangy, crunchy bits that contrast with the creamy base.

The step that matters

Adding the olive oil. Oil must be added drop by drop at first, because the yolk lecithin can only hold small droplets of oil in suspension. Adding it too fast breaks the emulsion, leaving the sauce thin and oily instead of stiff.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

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

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