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Sauce

Tartar Butter Sauce

A creamy butter-based sauce with salt, cayenne, sugar, mustard, egg yolk, vinegar, lemon juice, pickles, capers, and tarragon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,281 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tartar Butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the butter to a cream.

  2. In a cup, mix the salt, Cayenne, sugar, and mustard.

  3. Add the egg yolk and beat until light and thick.

  4. Gradually add the creamed butter, then the vinegar and lemon juice until smooth and light.

  5. Finally, stir in the pickles, capers, and tarragon.

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. Mustard + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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

Butter
Creamed butter forms the rich, fatty body of the sauce.
Egg yolk
Emulsifies the butter and vinegar, giving the sauce a smooth, thick texture.
Mustard
Its compounds help stabilise the emulsion and add a sharp, pungent flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that cuts through the richness of the butter and yolk.
Cucumber pickles
Contribute tangy acidity and crisp texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually add the creamed butter. Adding the butter slowly while beating lets the egg yolk emulsify it into the sauce. Adding it too fast can cause the emulsion to break, leaving the sauce greasy and separated.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

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

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