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Tartar Sauce

A savory sauce made with butter, flour, onion, garlic, spices, stock, water, capers, sardines, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Tartar Sauce

Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 10,173 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Tartar Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a skillet, heat the fat or butter until melted.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for a minute.

  3. Add the chopped onion, minced garlic, bay leaves, grated celery root, grated carrot, cloves, and peppercorns.

  4. Pour in the soup stock and water, then bring to a boil.

  5. Reduce heat and let it simmer for 1 hour.

Finish the sauce

  1. Strain the mixture and stir in the capers, chopped sardines, and lemon slices.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Garlic + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together834 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fat or butter
Carries the flavour of the aromatics and enriches the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, body-rich base when cooked briefly in fat.
Soup stock
Forms the liquid base that simmers and carries the flavour of the vegetables.
Capers
Add sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the richness of the sauce.
Sardines
Add a deep, savoury, salty flavour that boosts the sauce's umami.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity that balances the savoury and fatty elements.

The step that matters

Simmering the base for 1 hour. Too vigorous a boil can cloud the liquid and reduce it unevenly, while too short a simmer leaves the vegetables and aromatics under-extracted. A gentle, steady simmer extracts flavour cleanly before straining.

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, onion, garlic, celery, carrot, capers):

  1. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  2. Thymebetter flavor fit
  3. Cuminbetter flavor fit
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, onion, garlic, celery, carrot, capers. 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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