Sauce Tartare
Make 1 cup mayonnaise. Chop very fine 1 tablespoon each of capers, olives, green cucumber pickle, and parsley. Press in a cloth till quite dry. Blend gradually with the mayonnaise.
For fried or broiled fish.
A compound mayonnaise that depends almost entirely on how dry you get the chopped pickles. Everything else is assembly.
- Wring the garnish dryThis is the hinge. Capers, olives and pickle carry a great deal of brine, and stirred in wet they will thin the mayonnaise and eventually break it. Chop fine, gather in a clean cloth or a doubled paper towel, and twist hard until no more liquid comes out.
- Green cucumber pickleA sour cucumber pickle, not a sweet one. A dill gherkin or French cornichon is the closest current equivalent; bread-and-butter pickles will make the sauce cloying.
- OlivesPlain green olives in brine, pitted, are the likeliest reading of the bare word "olives" here. Pimento-stuffed or oil-cured types push the sauce toward a different flavour entirely.
- Blend graduallyFold the solids in a spoonful at a time rather than dumping them in. A cup of mayonnaise takes about four tablespoons of chopped garnish without loosening, but only if it goes in slowly.
- The mayonnaise itselfThe recipe assumes a hand-made mayonnaise of raw yolk, oil, and vinegar or lemon. If you make your own and are serving anyone pregnant, elderly, or immune-compromised, use pasteurised eggs; commercial mayonnaise is pasteurised as sold.
- Yield and keepingAbout one and a quarter cups, a little less once the garnish is pressed dry. Best within two days refrigerated, after which the pickles continue to weep and the sauce slackens.
- ServingServe cold alongside hot fish rather than spooned over it, or the heat will slacken the emulsion on the plate.
Sauce tartare is a nineteenth-century French restaurant sauce, mayonnaise built out with capers, gherkins and herbs, and its name is generally traced to the vague European use of "à la tartare" for anything sharp or highly seasoned rather than to any Tatar cooking. The entry ends on the note that it accompanies fried and broiled fish.