Home › Game › Sauce Tartare for Fish
Sauce Tartare for Fish
Sauce tartare, for fried and broiled meats and fish, particularly fish, is mayonnaise dressing seasoned with relishes. To a cupful of dressing, add a tablespoonful of chopped olives, a tablespoonful of capers and a teaspoonful of onion juice.
A compound sauce rather than a from-scratch one: it assumes you already have mayonnaise on hand and tells you only what to stir into it. The proportions are sound and translate directly.
- YieldA cupful of dressing plus the additions, so a little over a cup of finished sauce; roughly four to six servings of fried or broiled fish. It doubles without adjustment.
- "Mayonnaise dressing"In books of this period this most likely means true emulsified mayonnaise of egg yolk, oil, and vinegar or lemon, rather than the cooked flour-thickened "boiled dressing" that many such volumes also carried. Boiled dressing gives a thinner, sweeter, distinctly different sauce.
- Onion juiceGrate a peeled onion on a fine rasp and press the pulp through a sieve, or crush grated onion in a garlic press. A teaspoonful takes only a slice or two. Minced onion is not a substitute here — the point is flavour without texture or moisture pockets.
- OlivesGreen olives in brine, stoned and chopped fine. Modern pimiento-stuffed olives work, though the pimiento sweetens the sauce slightly; plain Manzanilla or Picholine is closer to the original intent.
- CapersDrain them and chop coarsely rather than adding whole, so they distribute. Salt-packed capers should be rinsed and soaked briefly first, or the sauce turns aggressively salty.
- "Relishes"The word here means sharp pickled things generally, not sweet pickle relish. Chopped cornichon or gherkin is a traditional addition and fits the formula; a tablespoonful in place of some of the olive is well within the style.
- Rest before servingHalf an hour in the refrigerator lets the onion juice and the flavourings work into the emulsion; the sauce is generally better for it than served straight after mixing.
- KeepingTwo or three days covered and cold. It will loosen and weep as the chopped pickles release liquid; stir it back together rather than adding more oil.
Sauce tartare belongs to the great nineteenth-century French repertoire of cold mayonnaise derivatives. It had become a standard accompaniment to fried fish in English and American kitchens, which is why a book like this can dispense with any explanation and simply list the additions to a cup of dressing. A cook was expected to know that tartare went with sole and oysters, not with venison. The recipe also quietly assumes a household that made mayonnaise routinely by hand, before jarred versions were sold in shops.