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Sauce

Hot Sauce Tartare

A hot sauce made with olives, gherkins, capers, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Hot Sauce Tartare

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Add the chopped olives, gherkins, capers, and parsley to the hot boiled dressing.

  2. Stir the mixture over hot water until heated.

Serve

  1. Serve with fish or baked ham.

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.

  1. Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 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

Hot boiled dressing
Forms the creamy, tangy base that carries the other flavours through the sauce.
Olives
Add salty, savoury depth to the sauce.
Gherkins
Add crunch and a sharp, sour tang.
Capers
Add briny, sharp acidity and a strong aroma.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green aroma and a light herbal note.

The step that matters

Stirring the mixture over hot water until heated. Gentle, indirect heat warms the cooked dressing evenly. Too much heat can make a cooked, emulsified dressing thicken unevenly, curdle or separate, so keep the water hot rather than boiling and stir steadily.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Garlicfits less well
  4. Oreganofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, capers. 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.

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