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Sauce

Caper Sauce I

A sauce made with butter, mutton stock, flour, capers, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,024 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Caper Sauce I

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt 1 cup of butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add flour and gradually pour in the mutton stock, ensuring it is free from fat.

Finish the sauce

  1. Stir in the capers and the slightly beaten egg yolk.

  2. Add the remaining butter bit by bit, stirring until combined.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + caperstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + muttontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and helps give the sauce a smooth, glossy body.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by absorbing liquid as it cooks with the melted butter.
Mutton stock
Provides the liquid base and savoury flavour for the sauce.
Capers
Add a sharp, salty, tangy bite that cuts through the richness.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind and thicken the sauce.

The step that matters

Add the stock gradually. Pouring the stock in slowly while stirring lets the flour and butter paste blend evenly, which prevents lumps. Stock that still carries fat would make the sauce greasy and prone to separating.

Swap the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, mutton, flour, egg):

  1. Capersthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mutton, flour, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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