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TARTAR SAUCE (another way)
Wash and mince finely four shallots. Put them into a mortar with a tea-spoonful of chopped tarragon or chervil (or both), a tea-spoonful of dry mustard, a tea-spoonful of salt, half a tea-spoonful of pepper, and the hard boiled yolks of two eggs. Pound these ingredients until quite smooth. Put them into a bowl, and mix with them very gradually three table-spoonfuls of pure salad-oil. The oil should be put in first in drops, and afterwards in tea-spoonfuls, and the sauce should be well beaten between each addition. If this point is carefully attended to, there will be no danger of the sauce curdling. When the oil is thoroughly incorporated, add three dessert-spoonfuls of best vinegar and one of chilli vinegar. Serve in a tureen.
A cooked-yolk emulsion rather than the mayonnaise-and-pickle mixture the name now implies. It comes together in a mortar and needs nothing but patience with the oil.
- The hinge: add the oil in dropsHard-boiled yolks emulsify far less readily than raw ones, and the sauce will break if the oil goes in fast. Work in the first spoonful literally drop by drop, beating until each is absorbed, before moving up to teaspoonfuls.
- Dessert-spoonfulTwo teaspoons, or roughly 10 ml — midway between a teaspoon and a tablespoon. So about 30 ml of good vinegar and 10 ml of chilli vinegar against 45 ml of oil.
- Chilli vinegarVinegar steeped with chillies, a common commercial and home-made store cupboard item of the period. A splash of any hot pepper vinegar or a few drops of hot sauce loosened with plain vinegar gives the same effect.
- Salad-oilIn this period the term generally means olive oil, milder than the strongly grassy oils sold today. Any neutral oil works if you want the herbs and shallot forward.
- Mortar or processorA small food processor will pound the yolks, shallot and herbs smooth in seconds, and will also take the oil safely if you trickle it through the feed tube. The mortar gives a slightly coarser, more fragrant result.
- ShallotsFour is a good deal of raw allium for this quantity. Two or three medium shallots is nearer the intended balance, and rinsing the mince in cold water tames the bite.
- Balance and yieldThis makes roughly half a cup — enough for four servings alongside fried fish, cold meat or a grill. The finished sauce is sharp and loose rather than thick; taste for salt after the vinegar goes in.
Sauce tartare belongs to the family of cold, mustard-sharpened emulsions that French cookery codified in the nineteenth century, alongside remoulade and sauce verte; the name is generally traced to a vague European use of "à la tartare" for anything served with a fierce, pungent accompaniment, rather than to any Tatar dish. The book gives more than one version, this one building on pounded hard-boiled yolks in the manner of older pestle-and-mortar sauces, while another method starts from a raw-yolk mayonnaise. The drop-by-drop instruction here amounts to a lesson in emulsion. The pickle-heavy tartare familiar from fish suppers came later, as capers and gherkins moved from optional garnish to defining ingredient.