Caper buds. Capers are a distinctive ingredient in Italian cuisine, especially in Sicilian, Aeolian and southern Italian cooking. They are commonly used in salads, pasta salads, meat dishes, and pasta sauces. Examples of uses in Italian cuisine are chicken piccata and "spaghetti alla puttanesca". Capers are known for being one of the ingredients of tartar sauce. They are often served with cold smoked salmon or cured salmon dishes (especially lox and cream cheese). Capers and caper berries are sometimes substituted for olives to garnish a martini. Capers are categorized and sold by their size, defined as follows, with the smallest sizes
Steak tartare Slavic regions. The first reference (to "tartar steak") in fact seems to come from America in 1889. In the early twentieth century what is now generally known as "steak tartare" was called "steack à l'Americaine". Steak tartare was a variation on that dish; the 1921 edition of Escoffier's "Le Guide Culinaire" defines it as "steack à l'Americaine" made without egg yolk, served with tartar sauce on the side. The current name is a shortening of the French original ""à la tartare"", literally meaning "served with tartar sauce", a dish popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Over time, the