Tartar Sauce
Make one cup mayonnaise. Chop very fine one tablespoonful each of capers, olives, cucumber pickle and parsley.
Press in a cloth till quite dry. Blend gradually with the mayonnaise. For fried or boiled fish.
A compact, sound formula that still beats anything jarred. Everything hinges on getting the chopped garnish dry before it meets the mayonnaise.
- The pressing stepSqueezing the minced capers, olives, pickle and parsley in a cloth until "quite dry" is the whole technique. Brine and pickle liquor will thin the mayonnaise and can break the emulsion outright; a doubled square of cheesecloth or a clean tea towel, twisted hard, is what you want.
- Cucumber pickleProbably a plain brined or sweet cucumber pickle; the recipe does not specify, and nothing in it rules out a dill pickle. A firm gherkin or cornichon is a reasonable match and needs no sugar adjustment.
- OlivesAn unqualified 'olive' in American cookbooks of this period was most often a green olive in brine. Pitted green olives are the safer reading; oil-cured black olives will overpower the cup of mayonnaise.
- QuantitiesOne tablespoon of each of the four gives about a quarter cup of chopped solids to a cup of mayonnaise; the recipe does not say whether the measure is taken before or after chopping.
- If you make the mayonnaiseA period mayonnaise is raw yolk, oil, and vinegar or lemon, and it is never heated. Use pasteurized eggs, keep the sauce refrigerated, and eat it within a couple of days; a good bottled mayonnaise works perfectly well as the base here.
- Blend graduallyFold the solids in by thirds rather than dumping them in at once. The mayonnaise stays smoother and you can stop when the balance suits you.
- Yield and restingAround a cup and a quarter, less whatever the pressing removes. Half an hour in the refrigerator lets the caper and pickle flavour move into the mayonnaise.
The name has nothing to do with the sauce's contents: it comes from the French sauce tartare. The usual explanation -- a European habit of attaching "Tartar" to dishes thought sharp, rough or wild, after the Tatar peoples of the Eurasian steppe -- is traditional rather than documented. By the time this book was printed the sauce was commonly given in something close to the form here, a cold mayonnaise cut with chopped pickled things, and American cookbooks of the era frequently pair it with fried fish, as this one does.