Name: Tartare Sauce
Ingredients: 4 egg yolks; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 teaspoon French mustard; pepper to taste; olive oil; tarragon vinegar; 2 tablespoons finely chopped gherkin; 2 tablespoons finely chopped shallot; 2 tablespoons finely chopped capers

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

Tartare Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, combine the egg yolks, salt, and mustard.
Gradually stir in 1 tablespoon of olive oil and 1 teaspoon of tarragon vinegar alternately until the sauce reaches the desired consistency.
Add the gherkin, shallot, and capers, and mix well.
For best results, prepare the sauce over pounded ice.

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.

Shallot + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together405 recipes

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

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together624 recipes

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

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together602 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Tarragon + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together379 recipes

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

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together859 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the mustard

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

Mustardthe original
Chiveabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, olive, tarragon, vinegar, shallot, 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).