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Sauce

Hot Sauce Tartare

A sauce made with hot boiled dressing, olives, gherkins, capers, and parsley, served with fish or baked ham.

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

  1. Combine the hot boiled dressing with the chopped olives, gherkins, capers, and parsley in a bowl.

  2. Stir the mixture over hot water until heated through.

  3. 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
Provides the creamy, tangy base that carries the other ingredients and moistens the sauce.
Olives
Add salty, savoury flavour and a firm bite to the sauce.
Gherkins
Contribute acidity and a crisp texture that cuts through richness.
Capers
Add sharp, briny flavour that brightens the sauce.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma and a touch of colour.

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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