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Tartar Sauce
1 cup mayonnaise dressing 1 teaspoon onion-juice 1 tablespoon capers 1 tablespoon chopped cucumber pickle Make the mayonnaise rather more sour and with a little more mustard than for salad, and mix into it the capers, pickle and onion-juice. Set on the ice until needed. This sauce should be quite thick when served.
A cold compound sauce built on mayonnaise, with the seasoning adjusted before the solids go in. The one thing to get right is the base: it must be sharper and more mustardy than salad mayonnaise, because the pickle and capers are drained solids that dilute nothing but soften the edge.
- Onion-juiceGrate a peeled onion on the fine side of a box grater and press the pulp through a sieve, or grate directly into a bowl and use the liquid. It gives onion flavour without the wet crunch of chopped onion, which would thin the sauce.
- Cucumber pickleThis means a sour dill or gherkin, not a sweet bread-and-butter pickle. Chop it fine and blot it dry on a towel; excess brine will slacken the sauce.
- CapersDrain and, if salt-packed, rinse and dry. Chop them roughly if they are the large sort; the small nonpareils can go in whole.
- Making the base sharperIf you are starting from bought mayonnaise, work in about a teaspoon of lemon juice or white wine vinegar and half a teaspoon of Dijon or dry mustard per cup, then taste. Add the acid a little at a time so you do not overshoot the seasoning or thin the sauce.
- Raw-egg mayonnaiseA mayonnaise made from scratch here is never cooked. Use pasteurized eggs if serving anyone very young, elderly, pregnant or immunocompromised.
- "Set on the ice"Refrigerate, covered, and give it at least half an hour so the onion and pickle flavours come forward. Homemade mayonnaise sauces keep about three days; ones based on commercial mayonnaise, about a week.
- Keeping it thickFold the solids in rather than beating them; vigorous stirring after the emulsion is made can loosen it. Chilling will firm up a slack but intact sauce, though it will not repair a broken emulsion.
- YieldA little over a cup, enough for six to eight servings of fried or broiled fish.