Tartare Sauce
INGREDIENTS for sauce for good-sized dish. The yolks of 4 eggs, 1 teaspoonful of mustard, teaspoon- TARTLETS. ful of salt, 2 dessertspoonfuls of chopped pickled onions and gherkins, 1 teaspoonful of chopped parsley, olive oil, tarragon and plain vinegar, a little cayenne. AVERAGE COST, 9d.
Break the yolks into a basin, with the salt and mustard, then stir in a tablespoonful of oil, then one of mixed vinegar, and so on, till the sauce is of the right consistency. This must be done very gradually, and the oil must preponderate. Then add the chopped onion and gherkin, and a little cayenne if liked.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Tartlets. INGREDIENTS for 12 tartlets. Trimmings of puff-paste about lb., any jam or marmalade that may be preferred. AVERAGE COST, 9d. Roll out the paste to the thickness of about 1/2 inch; butter some small round patty-pans, line them with it, and cut off the superfluous paste close to the edge of the pan. Put a small piece of bread into each tartlet (this is to keep them in shape), HOME-MADE TARTLETS. and bake in a brisk oven for about 10 minutes, or rather longer. When they are done, and are of a nice brown colour, take the pieces of bread out carefully, and replace them by a spoonful of jam or marmalade. TIME.-10 to 15 minutes.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Two entries have run together here: a hand-made tartare sauce (a mayonnaise, built yolk by drop) and a set of jam tartlets from puff-paste trimmings. Both are workable as written, given a few translations.
- The hinge: oil first, and slowlyThe sauce is an emulsion, and the line "the oil must preponderate" is the whole instruction. Add the first few tablespoons of oil a drop at a time, whisking constantly, and only alternate in vinegar once the base has visibly thickened; going too fast splits it. If it does break, start a fresh yolk in a clean basin and whisk the split mixture into it a spoonful at a time.
- Quantities of oilFour yolks will carry roughly 1 1/2 to 2 cups (350-475 ml) of oil before the sauce stiffens beyond spooning. The recipe gives no figure because you stop when the consistency looks right, not when a measure is empty.
- Dessertspoonful and teaspoonfulA dessertspoon is 2 teaspoons, so "2 dessertspoonfuls of chopped pickled onions and gherkins" is about 4 teaspoons total, finely chopped. Victorian teaspoons ran a little smaller than the modern 5 ml, but not enough to matter for seasoning.
- Mixed vinegar"Tarragon and plain vinegar" means tarragon vinegar alongside a plain vinegar, white wine or malt; the recipe gives no proportion, so mix the two in a jug to taste and add from that. Tarragon vinegar is still sold, and a sprig steeped in white wine vinegar for a week does the same job.
- Raw yolksNothing in this sauce is cooked. Use very fresh eggs, or pasteurised yolks if serving anyone elderly, pregnant, very young or immune-compromised, and keep the finished sauce refrigerated and eat it within two or three days.
- Brisk ovenFor the tartlets, read "brisk" as 425-450F (220-230C). Puff paste needs that heat to throw its steam and lift before the butter renders out.
- Bread as baking beansThe scrap of bread in each pan is a blind-baking weight; ceramic beans, dried pulses or a crumpled square of foil do the same and are easier to lift out. The text as printed reads 1/2 inch, which is thick for lining small patty-pans; about 1/8 inch handles better, though nothing on the page settles whether the printed figure is an error.
- Jam goes in coldThe jam is spooned in after baking, not before, so the pastry stays crisp and the preserve keeps its set. The weight of trimmings has dropped out of the text as printed, which gives only "about lb."; the yield is stated as 12 small patty-pan tartlets. They are best eaten the day they are made.
Sauce tartare belongs to the family of cold mayonnaise derivatives codified in nineteenth-century French kitchens and carried wholesale into English cookery books like Beeton's. The name is generally traced to the vogue for dishes styled a la tartare - meats and fish crumbed and grilled, served with a sharp cold sauce - rather than to any Tatar original, and by Mrs Beeton's day it had settled into the familiar formula of mayonnaise sharpened with pickled onion, gherkin and herbs. What dates this version is the labour: no bottled mayonnaise, no blender, just a basin, a whisk and the patience to add oil drop by drop, which is why the entry spends most of its words on the emulsion and almost none on the pickles. The tartlets printed alongside it show the same household economy - a dish built entirely from puff-paste trimmings left over from something grander, with whatever jam happened to be in the store cupboard.