“Tartar” in food refers to three very different things: steak tartare (a dish of seasoned raw beef), tartar sauce (a creamy condiment for seafood), and cream of tartar (a white powder used in baking). They share a name but have almost nothing else in common. The word traces back to the French “tartare,” a reference to the Tatar people of Central Asia, who were associated with exotic foods in European cuisine.
Steak Tartare: The Raw Beef Dish
Steak tartare is a classic French bistro dish made from finely chopped or hand-cut raw beef, typically tenderloin. The lean, tender cut produces a texture that’s beefy without being greasy or chewy. It’s seasoned with ingredients like capers, shallots, mustard, and Worcestershire sauce, then traditionally topped with a raw egg yolk. The dish is served cold and eaten immediately.
The concept has expanded well beyond beef. Restaurants now serve salmon tartare, tuna tartare, and other variations using the same technique of finely dicing raw protein and dressing it with sharp, bright flavors. In all cases, “tartare” signals that the main ingredient is raw and chopped, not cooked.
Because the meat is uncooked, steak tartare carries real food safety risks. Raw beef can harbor harmful bacteria including Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria. The USDA recommends cooking ground beef to an internal temperature of 160°F to destroy these pathogens and advises against eating raw or undercooked beef. Restaurants that serve tartare typically source high-quality, carefully handled meat to reduce (though not eliminate) the risk. People with weakened immune systems, young children, pregnant women, and older adults face the greatest danger from raw meat consumption.
Tartar Sauce: The Seafood Condiment
Tartar sauce is a mayonnaise-based condiment served alongside fried fish, shrimp, and other seafood. Its three core ingredients are mayonnaise, shallots, and capers. From there, recipes branch out to include finely chopped pickles or cornichons, Dijon or whole-grain mustard, fresh herbs like dill, parsley, or tarragon, and a squeeze of lemon juice.
The sauce was perfected by the legendary French chef Auguste Escoffier, who built it around gherkins, mayonnaise, and sharp mustard. The name came first: “tartare” originally referenced the Tatar people, from whom Europeans associated exotic ingredients like the gherkin. The sauce kept the name, and it became a staple pairing for breaded, fried fish across Europe and the United States. Despite sharing a name with steak tartare, the two developed independently. Tartar sauce contains no raw meat, no cream of tartar, and no tartaric acid.
Cream of Tartar: The Baking Ingredient
Cream of tartar is neither creamy nor a sauce. It’s a fine white powder (potassium bitartrate) that acts as an acid in baking. It forms naturally during winemaking: as grapes ripen, potassium combines with tartaric acid inside the fruit. When grape juice ferments into wine, the alcohol lowers the solubility of this compound, causing it to crystallize and settle out of the liquid. Winemakers filter out these crystals during a chilling process called cold stabilization, and the collected crystals are processed into the powder sold in grocery stores.
In the kitchen, cream of tartar does a few specific jobs. When you whip egg whites for meringue, adding a pinch of cream of tartar lowers the pH to the point where the proteins in the egg whites interact more effectively with each other, producing stiffer, more stable peaks. It also prevents sugar syrups from crystallizing by breaking sucrose into its two simpler sugars, glucose and fructose. This is why candy recipes and smooth frostings often call for it. Combined with baking soda, cream of tartar creates an acid-base reaction that produces carbon dioxide, which is essentially how homemade baking powder works.
Why They Share a Name
The common thread is linguistic, not culinary. “Tartare” entered French cooking vocabulary as a reference to the Tatar people and their perceived connection to unfamiliar foods. That association first attached to the sauce Escoffier popularized, then later extended to the practice of serving raw, finely chopped meat. Cream of tartar took a completely separate path: its name comes from “tartaric acid,” the grape-derived acid from which it’s chemically produced. The overlap is pure coincidence.
If a recipe calls for “tartar sauce,” you need the mayonnaise-based condiment. If it calls for “cream of tartar,” you need the white powder from the baking aisle. And if a menu lists “tartare,” expect something raw, finely chopped, and elegantly seasoned.