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Tartare Sauce (To half a pint of mayonnaise)
To half a pint of mayonnaise, add one-half tablespoonful capers, olives, gherkins and parsley, finely chopped. Boned fowl, cut into neat slices and dipped in liquid aspic, and served ice cold with a garniture of water cress, is an excellent entree. Cold boiled ham and smoked tongue are also in favor. These may be covered with a thin layer of chopped capers or pickled peppers.
Neat slices of cold boiled or braised beef, veal or lamb, seasoned with tarragon vinegar, minced chives and chervil, salt and pepper, encased in a circle of tomato jelly, also forms a pretty entree.
The first sentence is the actual sauce; everything after it is a run of cold-entrée suggestions that the sauce is meant to accompany. Read it as one short recipe plus a serving note.
- Half a pint of mayonnaiseOne cup. Store-bought mayonnaise works, though the sauce is noticeably better with a thick homemade one; if you make your own, use pasteurized eggs since nothing here is cooked.
- The half tablespoonful is ambiguousAs written it could mean a half tablespoon of each of the four garnishes or a half tablespoon of the mixture in total. A half tablespoon of each — capers, olives, gherkins, parsley — gives roughly the proportions of a modern tartare and is the safer reading.
- Chop fine and drainCapers, olives and gherkins carry a lot of brine. Chop them small, then press them in a sieve or blot on a towel, or the sauce loosens within an hour.
- GherkinsGherkins of this period were generally sour vinegar pickles rather than the sweet bread-and-butter style often sold under the name today. Cornichons or a plain dill pickle suit the sauce.
- Boned fowlA boned bird, sliced. The recipe does not say how it was cooked; a poached or roasted chicken, or good deli chicken breast, stands in without loss.
- Liquid aspic and tomato jellyBoth are savory gelatin: stock or tomato juice set with gelatin, cooled to the point where it coats a spoon in a thin film but has not yet set. Dip or spoon over the meat and chill until firm, usually 30–45 minutes.
- Smoked tongueStill available from butchers and in Jewish and Latin markets, but it needs long simmering and peeling before slicing. Cold roast beef or good ham is the practical substitute.
- YieldA cup of sauce serves six to eight alongside cold meats; it keeps three or four days covered in the refrigerator.
Sauce tartare is a French kitchen sauce of the nineteenth century — mayonnaise sharpened with the standard cold-sauce garnish of capers, pickles and herbs — and its name is generally traced to the older European habit of labeling anything sharp or forceful "à la tartare," after the Tatars. It belongs to a style of entertaining worth pausing over: the buffet of boned fowl, glazed ham and pressed tongue, everything sliced neat, jellied and served ice cold, was the sensible answer to feeding a crowd in a kitchen without much refrigeration to spare and a cook who wanted the work done the day before. Aspic and tomato jelly did double duty, sealing cut meat against the air while making a plate look composed, and the tartare was the one bright, acid note on a table of otherwise mild cold protein.