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Tartar Sauce

A creamy condiment made with egg yolks, oil, lemon, and pickled vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Tartar Sauce

Why it works: Cucumber and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 303 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tartar Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix salt, red pepper, and sugar.

  2. Add egg yolks and gradually stir in salad oil until thick.

  3. Incorporate lemon juice, onion juice, cucumber pickles, capers, and olives, then mix well to combine all ingredients.

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.

  1. Cucumber + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Capers + olivetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Lemon + caperstop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Cucumber + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil into the sauce, giving it a thick, creamy structure.
Salad oil
Adds richness and body, thickening the sauce as it is stirred in.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the rich oil.
Cucumber pickles
Add tangy acidity and crisp texture through the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the salad oil gradually. Adding oil slowly while stirring lets the egg yolk lecithin emulsify it into the sauce. Adding it too fast can break the emulsion, leaving the sauce oily and thin instead of thick.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sugar, egg, lemon, cucumber, capers, olive. 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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