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Sauce Tartare
To any mayonnaise add chopped olives, capers or pickles.
A one-line formula rather than a recipe, so the work is in the proportions and the prep the author leaves unstated. What follows fills in the blanks without changing the idea.
- ProportionsA workable ratio is about 2 tablespoons of chopped solids to 1 cup of mayonnaise, adjusted upward to taste. Less than that and it reads as plain mayonnaise with flecks in it.
- "Or" means or, but and is betterThe original offers olives, capers or pickles as alternatives. Many versions of the sauce combine two or all three, often with a little chopped shallot or chive; treat the list as a menu rather than a rule.
- Drain and dry everythingOlives, capers and pickles all arrive wet with brine or vinegar. Blot them on a towel after chopping or the sauce will slacken and weep within an hour.
- Chop fineAim for pieces no larger than a caper. Coarse chunks sink and make the sauce awkward to spread.
- Salt lastCapers and olives carry a great deal of salt, and commercial mayonnaise is already seasoned. Taste after mixing rather than before.
- Rest itHalf an hour in the refrigerator lets the brine and the mayonnaise come together; some cooks find it better after a day.
- Yield and keepingOne cup of mayonnaise plus the chopped solids makes a little over a cup of sauce. Keep it covered and cold and use within three or four days; the added moisture shortens its life relative to the jar it came from.
Sauce tartare is a French cold sauce of the mayonnaise family, a near relation of remoulade. The origin of the name is disputed: it is often linked to the Tartars, though some writers instead connect it to the older culinary use of "à la tartare" for dishes served with a sharp cold sauce. Neither account is settled. In nineteenth-century professional kitchens the sauce was built from scratch — yolks, oil, mustard, then the chopped aromatics — and its appearance here as a one-line instruction is the whole argument of a book like this one. As bottled mayonnaise became cheap and reliable in the twentieth century, the home cook's job in a recipe like this was redefined as assembly rather than emulsion.