Name: Sauce Tartare
Ingredients: ½ cup Mustard Dressing; 1 egg yolk (optional); 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper or hot sauce; 1 teaspoon chopped chives; 1 teaspoon chopped parsley; 1 small onion, grated finely; 1 teaspoon capers or chopped pickle

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 ↓

Sauce Tartare

Ingredients

½ cup Mustard Dressing
1 egg yolk (optional)
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper or hot sauce
1 teaspoon chopped chives
1 teaspoon chopped parsley
1 small onion, grated finely
1 teaspoon capers or chopped pickle

Directions

Prepare the Mustard Dressing (see separate recipe).
In a bowl, combine the Mustard Dressing with the parsley, chives, and capers.
If desired, add the egg yolk and cayenne pepper or hot sauce.
Mix well until all ingredients are incorporated.

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 + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together624 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Chive + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together245 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,550 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Mustard + chivetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together587 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, egg, pepper, chive, parsley, capers):

Shallotbetter flavor fit
Horseradishbetter flavor fit
Lettucebetter flavor fit
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, egg, pepper, chive, parsley, 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).