Name: Hot Sauce Tartare
Ingredients: 1 cup hot boiled dressing; ½ tablespoon chopped olives; ½ tablespoon chopped gherkins; ½ tablespoon capers; ½ tablespoon chopped parsley

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

1 cup hot boiled dressing
½ tablespoon chopped olives
½ tablespoon chopped gherkins
½ tablespoon capers
½ tablespoon chopped parsley

Directions

Add the remaining ingredients to the hot boiled dressing.
Stir until heated over hot water.
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.

Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,550 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,688 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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: Provides the creamy, tangy base that the other ingredients are folded into.
Olives: Add briny, savoury bite that cuts through the richness of the dressing.
Gherkins: Contribute acidity and crunch, brightening the sauce.
Capers: Add sharp, salty acidity and a distinctive aroma.