Skip to main content
Sauce

Tartare Sauce

A creamy sauce made with egg yolk, mustard, tarragon, chervil, anchovy sauce, salad oil, and tarragon vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 824 recipes mention both. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tartare Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the emulsion

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolk well.

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

  3. Once thickened, mix in the tarragon vinegar until the sauce is as thick as cream.

Finish the sauce

  1. Add the chopped tarragon, chervil, anchovy sauce, and mustard, mixing well.

  2. If the sauce curdles, add another egg yolk and mix until smooth.

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. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mustard + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Mustard + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together207 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned 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 yolk
Acts as the emulsifier that holds the oil and vinegar together as a thick sauce.
Salad oil
Provides the fat that gives the sauce its rich body and creamy texture.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps thicken the sauce to a creamy consistency.
Mustard
Contains natural emulsifiers that help stabilise the sauce and add sharp flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the oil drop by drop. Oil must be added slowly while whisking so the egg yolk lecithin can surround the droplets. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolk, and the emulsion breaks and the sauce curdles.

Flavor stand-ins for the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, tarragon, chervil, anchovy, sauce, vinegar):

  1. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  2. Chiveabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Lettuceabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, tarragon, chervil, anchovy, sauce, vinegar. 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.

More tartar sauce recipes

Hot 3 See all 158 →

You might also like

Mixed MustardMixed Mustard9 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes