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Tartar Sauce No. 1
1 cup mayonnaise. 1 small onion, grated. 1 cucumber pickle, chopped fine. 1 tablespoon chopped parsley and capers.
Serve with croquettes, fish, oysters, jellied chicken and cold tongue.
A cold sauce assembled from four ingredients, with no method given beyond the implied stirring. The only real decisions are texture and drainage.
- Drain everythingGrated onion and chopped pickle both release liquid that will loosen the mayonnaise as the sauce stands. Press both in a sieve or squeeze in a towel before folding them in.
- "Cucumber pickle"The phrase means a whole pickled cucumber rather than relish, though whether sour, dill or sweet is not specified. A dill or half-sour suits the sharpness the sauce depends on; one small pickle yields only a couple of tablespoons chopped.
- Parsley and capersThe line reads as one tablespoon of the two combined, so about half a tablespoon each. Capers should be rinsed if salt-packed and chopped, not left whole, or they dominate in bursts.
- The mayonnaiseA homemade mayonnaise, likely what was intended here, is generally sharper than modern jarred kinds. If using commercial mayonnaise, a teaspoon of lemon juice or pickle brine will lift the acidity.
- Rest before servingGrated raw onion is harsh straight away and mellows in the refrigerator. A short rest helps; the sauce is best eaten within a day or so, as the raw onion flavour deteriorates.
- YieldAbout one and a quarter cups, enough for six to eight servings alongside fish or croquettes.
Tartare sauce belongs to the French cold-sauce family built on mayonnaise, and the name is generally traced to à la tartare, an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French kitchen label attached to sharp, pungent preparations rather than to any actual Tatar cooking. Her serving list — croquettes, fish, oysters, jellied chicken, cold tongue — is a fair inventory of the cold and fried foods a Philadelphia household of 1920 expected to put on the table. That she offers a Tartar Sauce No. 1 at all implies a No. 2.