Tartar sauce (French: sauce tartare), often spelled tartare sauce in the UK and other Commonwealth countries, is a cold, mayonnaise-based condiment typically mixed with chopped cornichons or gherkins and capers, along with soft herbs such as tarragon, dill, parsley and chives. It is commonly served with fried or breaded seafood dishes including fish and chips, fish sandwiches, fried oysters and calamari.
Tartar sauce developed from eighteenth-century dishes served à la tartare, breaded meats and fish paired with pungent cold dressings. Nineteenth-century cookbooks contained yolk-free and mayonnaise-based versions, and writers such as Alexis Soyer and Jules Gouffé positioned the sauce within the mayonnaise family. By the early twentieth century Auguste Escoffier presented tartar sauce with fried fish and tied it to steak tartare, while English usage of the term dates to the 1820s.
