Deposit in a bowl one gill of veloute sauce (No. 415), two tablespoonfuls of mustard, four fresh egg-yolks, salt and pepper; stir well together and incorporate into it five gills of oil and half a gill of tarragon vinegar, two chopped and blanched shallots, a dash of cayenne pepper, and a tablespoonful of tarragon and chervil, also half the quantity of chopped parsley, and an ounce of chopped up pickled gherkins.
Ranhofer's tartare is a mayonnaise built on four raw yolks that is never heated at any stage, which is where the recipe fails for a modern kitchen. The notes below explain the reading of the original and the specific risk.
The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its cold-sauce chapter is essentially a professional catalogue: numbered, cross-referenced, and written for a cook who already has velouté standing by. The name sauce tartare is generally traced to the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French habit of labelling sharp, mustardy or highly seasoned preparations "à la tartare" after the Tartars, a usage more decorative than geographic, though this is traditional explanation rather than settled fact; the sauce itself is a French mayonnaise derivative. Ranhofer's version is less pickle-forward than the tartare most people know, and he keeps it distinct from the "English style" that follows it at No. 632 — a reminder that in a Delmonico's kitchen the same name could cover two different sauces.