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Tartar Sauce

A creamy sauce made with egg yolks, mustard, oil, vinegar, shallot, tarragon, capers, and optional cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Tartar Sauce

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 ↓

Tartar Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a basin, mash the hard boiled yolks with a wooden spoon until smooth.

  2. Add the mustard, salt, and pepper, and mix well.

  3. Incorporate the raw yolks until the mixture is smooth.

  4. Gradually add the salad oil, drop by drop, mixing continuously.

  5. Add the tarragon vinegar in the same proportion, continuing until the sauce is thick like cream.

Chill and finish

  1. Chill the sauce in a basin surrounded by ice.

  2. Before serving, mix in the chopped shallot, tarragon, capers, and fresh cream if desired.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Shallot + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tarragon + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. 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

What each ingredient does

Raw egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and vinegar, giving the sauce its thick, creamy body.
Salad oil
Provides fat that, emulsified into the yolks, builds the sauce's rich texture.
Hard boiled egg yolks
Mashed smooth to form a base that gives the sauce body and a mellow richness.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Raw mustard
Adds sharpness and helps stabilise the emulsion.

The step that matters

Adding the oil. Oil must be added drop by drop while mixing continuously. Adding it too fast breaks the emulsion, so the sauce separates and stays thin instead of thickening.

Flavor stand-ins for the mustard

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

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Chiveabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, tarragon, vinegar, shallot, capers, cream. 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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