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Salmon and Tartare Sauce

A salmon dish served with a homemade tartare sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salmon and Tartare Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the salmon

  1. Bring a pot of water to a boil and add a generous amount of coarse sea salt.

  2. Add the salmon to the boiling water and cook until done.

Make the tartare sauce

  1. In a bowl, combine the egg yolks, salt, and pepper, and stir well with a wooden spoon.

  2. Gradually add the salad oil drop by drop while stirring continuously.

  3. Mix in the mustard, French vinegar, tarragon vinegar, and gherkins or capers until well combined.

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. Mustard + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tarragon + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Vinegar + tarragontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 vinegar into a thick, stable sauce.
Salad oil
Provides the fat that gives the sauce its rich, creamy body.
Made mustard
Helps hold the emulsion together and adds sharpness.
French vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Gherkins or capers
Add tangy, briny flavour and texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the oil drop by drop. Oil must be added slowly while whisking so it disperses into tiny droplets held by the egg yolk's lecithin. Adding it too fast breaks the emulsion, leaving a greasy, separated sauce.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Cucumberfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, egg, pepper, vinegar, tarragon, capers. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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