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Sauce

Tartare Sauce

A sauce made from egg yolks, mustard, oil, vinegar, pickled gherkin, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and 14,067 recipes mention both. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Tartare Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the yolks from the hard boiled eggs.

  2. In a mortar, combine the yolks, salt, and mustard, and pound them together.

Make the sauce

  1. Slowly add the oil while stirring continuously.

  2. Next, add the vinegar slowly while stirring.

  3. Finally, finely mince the gherkin and mix it in.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + mustardtop 28% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together9,210 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + vinegartop 33% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and vinegar share little aroma chemistry, yet 12,922 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks act as an emulsifier that holds the oil and vinegar together in the sauce.
Oil
Forms the rich, creamy body of the sauce as it emulsifies with the yolks.
Mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds a sharp, pungent flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that cuts through the richness of the oil and yolks.
Gherkin
Adds acidity and a crisp texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Slowly add the oil while stirring continuously. Egg yolk lecithin binds oil into tiny droplets to form a stable emulsion. Adding the oil too quickly overwhelms the yolks, so the droplets merge and the sauce separates and turns greasy.

Flavor stand-ins for the mustard

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

  1. Cucumberabout as good a flavor fit
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Capsicumabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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.

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