 Tartar sauce is often served with fried seafood dishes. | |
| Alternative names | Tartare sauce tartare |
|---|---|
| Type | Sauce |
| Place of origin | France |
| Main ingredients | Mayonnaise; choppedgherkins/cornichons or otherpickles;capers; herbs (e.g.tarragon,dill,parsley,chives) |
Tartar sauce, (French:sauce tartare), often spelledtartare sauce in theUK and otherCommonwealth countries, is a cold, mayonnaise-basedcondiment typically mixed with choppedcornichons orgherkins andcapers, along with soft herbs such astarragon,dill,parsley and/orchives. It is commonly served with fried or breadedseafood dishes includingfish and chips, fish sandwiches, friedoysters andcalamari.[1][2]
Tartar sauce developed from eighteenth century dishes servedà la tartare, breaded meats and fish paired with pungent cold dressings. Nineteenth century cookbooks contained yolk-free and mayonnaise-based versions, and writers such asAlexis Soyer andJules Gouffé positioned the sauce within the mayonnaise family. By the early twentieth centuryAuguste Escoffier presented tartar sauce with fried fish and tied it tosteak tartare, while English usage of the term dates to the 1820s.
Nineteenth-century French cookbooks describesauce tartare as amayonnaise to which pungent condiments and finely chopped aromatics are added.La grande cuisine illustree (late 19th to early 20th century) defines it as mayonnaise "augmented with capers, cornichons, tarragon and chervil, and strongly seasoned with mustard, English sauce (Worcestershire) and cayenne."[3] InLe Guide Culinaire (1903),Auguste Escoffier'sSauce Tartare is built by working hard-boiled egg yolks into a paste, mounting with oil and vinegar, and finishing with a puree of green onion or chives and a little mayonnaise. Escoffier intended the sauce for cold fish, shellfish, meats and poultry.[4]
Eighteenth-century cookbooks in French, English, and Polish useà la tartare for dishes of meat or fish that were breaded (or crumbed) and grilled or roasted, typically served with a sharp, cold sauce.[9][10][11] The accompanying "tartar" sauce in these early sources was an oil and acid emulsion or dressing sharpened with mustard and chopped aromatics, such as shallot or onion, anchovy, pickles and parsley, rather than a true mayonnaise. An English example is Nott's "Pigeons a la Tartare with cold Sauce" (1723), mixed from chopped onion or shallot, anchovy and pickles with oil, water, lemon juice and mustard.[12]
The earliest English attestations of the term "sauce tartare" date from the 1820s.[13]
Nineteenth-century books record tartar sauce recipes assembled without egg yolk or mayonnaise.Manuel de gastronomie (1825) gives a version thickened with breadcrumbs.[14]Antoine Beauvilliers'sL'art du cuisinier (1814 edition) lists a tartar sauce without crumbs but likewise not mayonnaise based.[15] Louis-Eustache Audot reproduced the recipe inLa cuisiniere de la campagne et de la ville (1853) and in a Spanish translation (1854), suggesting broad circulation across Europe.[16][17] An anonymous Polish manual,Nowa kuchnia warszawska (1838), likewise gives a cold tartar sauce of chopped shallots or onion and tarragon seasoned with mustard, salt, pepper, vinegar and oil, with no yolks.[18] The chef C. P. Robert even contrasted a hot tartar sauce without yolk to a cold yolk-based sauce he labeledrémoulade.[19]
By the early to mid-19th century, authors also described tartar sauce built from hard-boiled or raw yolks and oil. An Austrian manual (1824) printed "Senf-Tunke oder Remulade (Sauce Tartare)" with herbs and yolk.[20]Alexis Soyer'sThe Gastronomic Regeneration (1849) givesSauce a la Tartare using both cooked and raw yolks with cornichons, capers, parsley and shallot, plus French mustard and cayenne.[21] Polish sources adopted yolk-based versions as well. For example, Jozef Schmidt'sKuchnia polska (1860) sieved hard-boiled yolks with mustard and oil, adjusted with vinegar and optionally colored green with spinach or garden cress juice.[22]
In late-19th-century French practice, tartar sauce was firmly classed among the mayonnaise family.Jules Gouffe'sLe livre de cuisine (1867 and later editions of 1877) listedsauce tartare alongside related cold sauces,[23][24] and encyclopedic manuals of the era reinforced the mayonnaise base with chopped cornichons or capers and herbs.[3]
In classical usage,a la tartare meant "served with tartar sauce."Auguste Escoffier'sBeefsteak a la Tartare (1903) was defined as the raw chopped beef preparation "a l'Americaine without the egg yolk on top," withsauce tartare served separately.[25] Escoffier also listed the sauce as a standard accompaniment for fried fish, for exampleCabillaud frit.[26] Over the 20th century, the raw-beef dish now generally calledsteak tartare evolved independently, whilesauce tartare persisted as a widely used cold mayonnaise sauce.[27]
Earliest evidence 1824 (subscription required)
