Name: Sauce Tartare
Ingredients: ½ cup Mustard Dressing; 1 egg yolk (optional); 1 teaspoon Tabasco or cayenne pepper; 1 teaspoon chopped chives; ½ teaspoon chopped parsley; 1 small onion, grated very fine; 1 teaspoon capers or chopped pickle; coarse sea salt to taste

Why it works: Mustard and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sauce Tartare

Ingredients

½ cup Mustard Dressing
1 egg yolk (optional)
1 teaspoon Tabasco or cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon chopped chives
½ teaspoon chopped parsley
1 small onion, grated very fine
1 teaspoon capers or chopped pickle
coarse sea salt to taste

Directions

Make the sauce

Prepare the Mustard Dressing (see recipe).
Mix in the parsley, chives, and capers.
Add Tabasco or cayenne and salt to taste.

Chill

Chill the sauce in the refrigerator before serving.

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.

Mustard + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together624 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Chive + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together245 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,550 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Mustard + chivetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together587 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk: Adds richness and helps emulsify the sauce into a smooth, thick texture.
Mustard dressing: Forms the creamy base of the sauce and carries the other flavours.
Onion: Adds sharp, aromatic flavour that cuts through the richness.
Capers: Add briny acidity and a sharp, tangy bite.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, egg, pepper, chive, parsley, capers):

Shallotbetter flavor fit
Horseradishbetter flavor fit
Lettucebetter flavor fit
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, egg, pepper, chive, parsley, capers. 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.