Skip to main content
Main

Hot Tartare Sauce

A warm sauce made with butter, flour, egg yolk, vinegar, and pickled cucumber.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vinegar and cucumber are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,734 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyl acetate, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Hot Tartare Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour and enough boiling water to achieve a smooth consistency.

  3. Let the mixture cool for five minutes.

  4. Add the egg yolk and beat until well combined.

  5. If the sauce is too thick, add a little more butter and water.

  6. Stir in the vinegar and chopped pickled cucumber.

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. Vinegar + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + cucumbertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce base.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the butter and water into a smooth base that holds the sauce together.
Egg yolk
Emulsifies the fat and water so the sauce becomes creamy and stable.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.
Pickled cucumber
Adds tangy, crunchy bits that give the sauce its characteristic flavor.

The step that matters

Add the egg yolk and beat until well combined. The yolk must be fully blended into the warm base after it has cooled a little. Beating it in smoothly helps form a stable emulsion, so the sauce stays creamy instead of separating or turning grainy.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, egg, vinegar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Cucumberthe original
  4. Mustardfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, egg, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes