Name: Sauce Tartare
Ingredients: 1 cup mayonnaise; 1 teaspoon onion juice; 1 tablespoon chopped capers; 1 tablespoon chopped cucumber pickles

Why it works: Capers and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 303 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sauce Tartare

Ingredients

1 cup mayonnaise
1 teaspoon onion juice
1 tablespoon chopped capers
1 tablespoon chopped cucumber pickles

Directions

In a bowl, combine the mayonnaise and onion juice.
Add the chopped capers and cucumber pickles.
Mix well until all ingredients are thoroughly combined.

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.

Capers + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together303 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,381 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mayonnaise: Provides the fat and emulsified body that makes the sauce creamy and rich.
Capers: Add a briny, sharp flavour that cuts through the richness of the mayonnaise.
Cucumber pickles: Add acidity and a crisp bite that brightens the sauce.
Onion juice: Adds a sharp, pungent aroma and flavour.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (capers, cucumber):

Shallotbetter flavor fit
Lettucebetter flavor fit
Beetrootbetter flavor fit
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against capers, cucumber. 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.