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Tartar Sauce
Put the yolk of an egg quite free from white into a basin, and beat it for a minute or two with a pinch of salt, a pinch of pepper, and a table-spoonful of dry mustard. Stir into this, first in drops and afterwards in tea-spoonfuls, four table-spoonfuls of pure salad-oil, and be careful to beat the sauce for a minute or two between every addition, as its excellence depends in a great measure upon this being done. After each six tea-spoonfuls of oil put in a tea-spoonful of vinegar. Wash and mince finely three shallots, six small gherkins, and a table-spoonful of mixed chervil and tarragon. Put these into the sauce with a pinch of cayenne. Mix thoroughly, and serve. If the sauce is not immediately wanted, it should be kept in a cool place. Time to mix the sauce, half an hour. Probable cost, 8d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
This is a from-scratch mayonnaise, built one drop at a time, then turned into a herb-and-pickle sauce. Everything depends on the emulsion holding.
- The hinge: add the oil slowlyOne yolk will carry far more than four tablespoons of oil, but only if the first spoonful goes in drop by drop with steady beating. If the mixture ever looks slick or separated, stop adding oil and beat until it comes back together before continuing.
- Everything at room temperatureA cold yolk straight from the refrigerator emulsifies badly. Let the egg and the oil sit out for half an hour first. The recipe's "time to mix the sauce, half an hour" follows from its own method: oil added a teaspoon at a time with a minute or two of beating between each addition. A whisk will speed things up, but not by much if you follow the instruction as written.
- "Pure salad-oil"In period usage salad-oil generally meant olive oil, with "pure" indicating it was unadulterated rather than neutral in flavour. A modern peppery extra-virgin oil can turn bitter when beaten hard, so a mild olive oil, or a neutral oil with a little olive oil for flavour, is the safer choice.
- A tablespoon of dry mustardThat is a great deal of English mustard powder by modern taste, and it also acts as a second emulsifier. Start with a teaspoon, mix the sauce, and add more to taste at the end.
- Gherkins and shallotsThe "six small gherkins" are small sour pickled cucumbers of the cornichon type, not modern sweet pickles; sweet gherkins will make the sauce cloying. Three shallots is assertive raw onion flavour, so mince them very fine or rinse them briefly in cold water.
- HerbsChervil and tarragon should be fresh. Dried tarragon is acceptable at about a third the quantity; dried chervil has almost no flavour and is better left out, with a little parsley in its place.
- Raw yolkNothing here is cooked. If you are serving anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised, use a pasteurised egg or pasteurised yolks.
- Yield and keeping"Sufficient for five or six persons" comes to roughly half a cup. Keep it covered in the refrigerator and use it within two days; the shallots and vinegar sharpen as it sits.
Sauce tartare belongs to the family of cold emulsified sauces codified by nineteenth-century French kitchens, where mayonnaise was the base and the additions gave it a name: capers, herbs and mustard for rémoulade, shallots, gherkins and fine herbs for tartare. The name is usually traced to the vague European use of "à la tartare" for anything served with a fierce, sharp accompaniment, in the same spirit that gave us steak tartare; the connection to the actual Tatars appears to be decorative rather than culinary. The costing at eightpence and the instruction to keep it "in a cool place" both suit a household with a larder rather than a refrigerator, which is also why the sauce is made in the quantity that will be eaten at one meal.