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Tartare Sauce

A creamy sauce of egg yolks, mustard, oil, vinegar, and pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 624 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tartare Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the emulsion

  1. Place 2 egg yolks in a bowl and set it in a shallow pan with crushed ice.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of coarse sea salt, a good pinch of white pepper, a pinch of cayenne, and 1 teaspoon of mustard; stir well.

  3. Gradually add 2 cups of salad oil and ¼ cup of tarragon vinegar while stirring until smooth and creamy.

  4. Once the sauce is smooth, stir in 1 tablespoon of cold béchamel or velouté sauce.

Finish the sauce

  1. Add 2 teaspoons of chopped gherkins, 1 teaspoon of chopped capers, 1 teaspoon of chopped parsley, ½ teaspoon of finely chopped tarragon, and ½ teaspoon of finely chopped chervil.

  2. Do not add the gherkins and capers until the sauce is finished to prevent it from turning.

  3. If the sauce is too thick, add a few drops of lemon juice.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Tarragon + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together379 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  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 yolks
Form the emulsion that holds the oil and vinegar together as a smooth, creamy sauce.
Salad oil
Provides the fat that gives the sauce its rich body and smooth texture.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich oil and yolk and balances the flavour.
Mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds a sharp, pungent flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the oil gradually. Oil must be added slowly while stirring so the yolks can disperse it into tiny droplets. Adding it too fast breaks the emulsion, leaving the sauce oily and separated rather than smooth and creamy.

Flavor stand-ins for the white pepper

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

  1. Dillbetter flavor fit
  2. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  3. Fennelbetter flavor fit
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, mustard, tarragon, vinegar, sauce, 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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