Name: Tartar Sauce
Ingredients: 1 cup mayonnaise; 2 tablespoons chopped parsley; 2 tablespoons chopped capers

Why it works: Parsley and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,550 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tartar Sauce

Ingredients

1 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
2 tablespoons chopped capers

Directions

Combine mayonnaise, chopped parsley, and chopped capers in a bowl.
Mix well until all ingredients are evenly distributed.
Serve chilled with fried fish.

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.

Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,550 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Mayonnaise: Forms the creamy base and provides fat for a smooth, rich texture.
Capers: Add a briny, acidic bite that cuts through the richness of the mayonnaise.
Parsley: Adds fresh, green aroma and a mild herbal flavor.

“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.