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Sauce

Sauce Tartare

A creamy sauce made with shallots, chervil, tarragon, mustard, vinegar, salt, pepper, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Chervil and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sauce Tartare

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine the shallots, chervil, and tarragon.

  2. Add the French mustard, salt, pepper, and French vinegar.

  3. Stir in oil drop by drop until the sauce reaches your desired consistency.

  4. If the sauce is too thick, add a little more French vinegar drop by drop.

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. Chervil + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Shallot + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together266 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Shallot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Shallot + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Tarragon + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

French mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps emulsify the oil into the sauce.
Oil
Forms the body of the sauce as it is whisked in slowly.
French vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and thins it when too thick.
Shallots
Add a mild, sharp onion flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring in the oil drop by drop. Adding oil slowly lets the droplets disperse and bind with the mustard and vinegar, forming a stable emulsion. Adding it too fast can split the sauce into separated oil and liquid.

Flavor stand-ins for the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, chervil, tarragon, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Chivebetter flavor fit
  2. Lettuceabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Beetrootabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, chervil, tarragon, pepper, vinegar. 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.

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