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Tartare Sauce

A creamy sauce made with egg yolks, olive oil, vinegar, mustard, sugar, pepper, salt, onion juice, capers, and cucumber pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 624 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tartare Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the egg yolks and olive oil in a bowl, whisking until smooth.

  2. Add the vinegar, mustard, sugar, pepper, salt, and onion juice, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the chopped capers and cucumber pickle last.

Serve

  1. Serve with fried or boiled fish, boiled tongue, fish salad, or with fried and broiled meats.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Mustard + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify with the oil to give the sauce its thick, creamy body.
Olive oil
Forms the fat phase of the emulsion, adding richness and smooth texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the rich oil and yolks.
Prepared mustard
Helps stabilize the emulsion and adds a sharp, tangy flavor.

The step that matters

Whisking the yolks and oil until smooth. Oil must be added slowly and whisked in so tiny droplets disperse through the yolk. Adding it too fast can break the emulsion, leaving the sauce oily and separated instead of thick and creamy.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, olive, vinegar, mustard, sugar, pepper, capers):

  1. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  2. Horseradishbetter flavor fit
  3. Lettucebetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, olive, vinegar, mustard, sugar, pepper, 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.

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