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Sauce Tartare
Make a mayonnaise dressing, using tarragon vinegar. To each cup of dressing add one shallot, chopped fine, two tablespoonfuls, each, of finely chopped capers, olives and cucumber pickles, one tablespoonful of chopped parsley, and one-fourth a teaspoonful of powdered tarragon.
This is a compound sauce built on a base the book assumes you already know how to make. The work is in the chopping and, above all, in the draining.
- The hinge: dry your garnishCapers, olives and pickles all arrive wet with brine, and brine will thin and eventually break the mayonnaise. Chop them fine, then press them in a clean towel or a fine sieve before folding them in.
- Mayonnaise baseAbout one cup of thick mayonnaise, made with tarragon vinegar in place of the usual lemon or plain vinegar. Homemade mayonnaise contains raw egg yolk; use pasteurized eggs if serving anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised. Good bottled mayonnaise thinned with a teaspoon of tarragon vinegar works if you would rather not.
- Cucumber picklesMost likely sour cucumber pickles or gherkins rather than the sweet bread-and-butter sort. Cornichons are a close match and chop neatly.
- OlivesGreen olives in brine, pitted, are the likely intent; the recipe does not specify a type.
- ShallotOne whole shallot per cup is assertive. Mince it as finely as you can, or rinse the mince briefly in cold water and pat dry to soften the bite.
- Powdered tarragonDried tarragon ground fine. A quarter teaspoon of dried is roughly three-quarters of a teaspoon of fresh chopped leaf if you prefer to use fresh.
- Resting and yieldMakes about a cup and a half, enough for six to eight servings. Let it sit an hour in the refrigerator before serving so the tarragon and shallot come forward; use within two or three days.
Sauce tartare is a French classic of the nineteenth-century repertoire: a cold mayonnaise sharpened with the standard fines herbes and pickled garnish, served with fried fish, cold meat and croquettes. The name is generally traced to the vague French use of à la tartare for anything served with a piquant cold sauce, rather than to any Tatar dish; the same loose usage lies behind steak tartare. Note too that the recipe assumes tarragon vinegar is on hand.