Name: Tartar Sauce
Ingredients: 1 teaspoon prepared mustard; 1 teaspoon finely minced shallots; 1 teaspoon chopped parsley or tarragon; 1 teaspoon capers or pickled gherkins; cayenne pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste

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

1 teaspoon prepared mustard
1 teaspoon finely minced shallots
1 teaspoon chopped parsley or tarragon
1 teaspoon capers or pickled gherkins
cayenne pepper to taste
coarse sea salt to taste

Directions

Combine prepared mustard, shallots, parsley or tarragon, and capers or gherkins in a bowl.
Season with cayenne pepper and coarse sea salt as needed.
Mix well and adjust ingredients to taste.

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.

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).
Mustard + shallottop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together859 recipes

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

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,550 recipes

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

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together3,737 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Prepared mustard: Adds sharp, tangy flavor that brightens the sauce and balances richness.
Shallots: Add mild, sharp onion flavor and a little aroma to the sauce.
Capers or pickled gherkins: Add briny acidity and a crisp, sharp bite.

Flavor stand-ins for the parsley

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

Tarragonbetter flavor fit
Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, shallot, capers, pepper. 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.