Name: Sauce, Tartare
Ingredients: ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ¼ teaspoon black pepper; 2 teaspoons mustard; 2 teaspoons vinegar; 1 egg yolk; 4 tablespoons olive oil; a few drops vinegar (if needed)

Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sauce, Tartare

Ingredients

Directions

Sprinkle salt and pepper over the mixture.
Mix mustard and vinegar together, then add chopped herbs gradually.
Beat the egg yolk and add it to the mixture.
Add olive oil drop by drop while stirring continuously.
If the sauce is too thick, add a few drops of vinegar.
Serve with cold meat.

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.

Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,950 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Vinegar + olivetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,297 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).
Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30,263 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the mustard

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

Capsicumbetter flavor fit
Cucumberabout as good a flavor fit
Tomatoabout as good a flavor fit
Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, vinegar, egg, olive. 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).