Name: How to Prepare Cold Mayonnaise-sauce, ‘a LA Tartare’
Ingredients: 6 tablespoons chopped raw fine herbs (parsley, chives, shallots, gherkins, capers, grated horseradish); 1 tablespoon mustard; a pinch of cayenne pepper; mayonnaise sauce prepared with eggs

Why it works: Shallot and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 405 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

How to Prepare Cold Mayonnaise-sauce, ‘a LA Tartare’

Ingredients

6 tablespoons chopped raw fine herbs (parsley, chives, shallots, gherkins, capers, grated horseradish)
1 tablespoon mustard
a pinch of cayenne pepper
mayonnaise sauce prepared with eggs

Directions

Prepare mayonnaise sauce with eggs according to your preferred method.
Incorporate 6 tablespoons of chopped herbs into the mayonnaise.
Add 1 tablespoon of mustard and a pinch of cayenne pepper, then mix well until combined.

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.

Shallot + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together405 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,832 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together450 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Capers + mustardtop 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).

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

What each ingredient does

Mayonnaise: Forms the creamy base that carries the other flavours and gives the sauce its body.
Mustard: Adds sharpness and helps emulsify the sauce, balancing the richness of the mayonnaise.
Chopped fine herbs: Add fresh, sharp and briny flavour and visual texture throughout the sauce.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chive, shallot, capers, horseradish, mustard, pepper, sauce):

Tarragonfits better
Parsleythe original
Dillfits about as well
Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chive, shallot, capers, horseradish, mustard, pepper, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.