Tartar Sauce Origins

Tartar sauce gets its name from its association with steak tartare, a popular dish served in 19th-century France. Steak tartare consists of minced raw beef mixed with onions, capers, mushrooms, pepper, Worcestershire sauce, and other seasonings.

Historical accounts suggest that Mongol warriors, known as Tatars or Tartars, used to tenderize meat by placing it under their saddles. It is believed that the Tartars seasoned their raw, saddle-battered steak and made yogurt from mare's milk infused with herbs. This yogurt was allowed to curdle by bouncing it in a goatskin saddle for several days, which is considered the origin of Tartar sauce.

The French, renowned for their production of mayonnaise and aioli sauce, may have adopted the term "tartar" based on their spelling of the Tatar name, Tartare. Mentions of Tartar sauce can be found in 19th-century French cookbooks as a condiment to accompany beef tartare.

Today, tartar sauce is widely used as a condiment for seafood. It pairs well with various seafood options, including cod, salmon, haddock, shrimp, and pollock. In the 1920s, Hellman's introduced commercially available jarred tartar sauce, making it more convenient to purchase from grocery stores instead of preparing it from scratch.
Tartar Sauce Origins

History of Thousand Island dressing

Thousand Island Dressing was named in honor of the beautiful area where it was first prepared, Thousand Islands, which are located between New York and Canada, around the turn of the 20th century. At the turn of the century, this region along the St. Lawrence River was a summer destination for the nation’s elite.

Story goes, in the early 20th century, a fishing guide's wife, Sophie Lalonde, made the condiment for her husband's shore dinner. She often served her dressing to the fisherman and one of the people who happened to sample the dressing on her trips to the Thousand Islands was actress May Irwin, who asked for the recipe.

She in turn, gave it to another Thousand Islands summer visitor George Boldt, who was the owner of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. Boldt then directed his world-famous maitre d', Oscar of the Waldorf, to put it on the hotel's menu at once. In 1972, Sophia’s original recipe for her “sauce” was found in a safe at the LaLondes’ restaurant, The Thousand Islands Inn, by its then owner, fisherman Allen Benas, who bottles and sells it at the local upscale grocer today.

Another version of the story begins at Boldt Castle, the palatial summer home that Waldorf-Astoria owner George Boldt built for his wife, Louise, at the turn of the last century – on a heart-shaped island.

According to legend, one day, while Boldt and Louise were out adventuring nearby on his yacht (steam-powered, yacht) and ready for lunch, his onboard chef and trusted steward suddenly realized they forgot the dressing for the salad. So, the chef made a dressing with the ingredients he had on the boat and this became Thousand Island dressing.
History of Thousand Island dressing

History of Mayonnaise

Mayonnaise is a stable emulsion of oil, egg yolk and either vinegar or lemon juice.

Historically, mayonnaise was based on aioli, a Catalan and Privencal sauce that combined olive oil, eggs and garlic.

Pliny the Elder (AD23-79) who was a Roman procurator in Tarragona on the Cataklan coats, seems to refer to aioli when he writes in his Natural History that when garlic ‘is beaten up in oil and vinegar it swells up in foam to as a surprising size’.

In the late eighteenth century, the French whipped the egg and slowly added oil.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the sauce got its present name of mayonnaise purely by accident through a printing error in an early 1841 cookbook.

Mayonnaise was mentioned in cookbooks published in the United States by 1829, but did not become an important condiment until the end of the nineteenth century. Many Germans dishes use mayonnaise or other sauces with mayonnaise as a base.

Recipes for making mayonnaise and for using it as an ingredient in other dishes began to appear regularly in American cookbooks by 1880, and in cookery magazines shortly thereafter.

The first known attempt to manufacturer commercial mayonnaise occurred in 1907, when a delicatessen owner in Philadelphia marketed it as Mrs. Schlorer’s Mayonnaise.

He mixed up a batch of his wife’s mayonnaise in the back of his store and added preservatives.

In 1912, Manhattan delicatessen owner Richard Hellman began marketing a shelf-stabilized mayonnaise packed in jars. He soon released that the secret to his success was based on his wife, Nina recipe of mayonnaise she put on the sandwiches and salads.

The rest is mayonnaise history with Hellman’s Mayonnaise becoming one of the best selling spreads of all time. It was trademarked as Blue Ribbon label in 1926.
History of Mayonnaise