Name: John Dory with Caper Sauce
Ingredients: 1 John Dory fish (5-6 pounds); 1 tablespoon vinegar; 1 tablespoon coarse sea salt; 1 tablespoon fresh-boiled shrimps; 1 tablespoon capers; 3 ounces butter; 1 tablespoon baked flour; ⅓ pint boiling water; 1 dessertspoon whole capers

Why it works: Capers and flour 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 ↓

John Dory with Caper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

Rub the fish with vinegar and place it in cold water with salt.
Bring to a boil, skim, then simmer for 20-25 minutes, being careful not to break the skin.

Make the caper sauce

For the sauce, pound the shrimps and capers together.
Knead the butter and flour, then stir into the boiling water.
Add the pounded capers and shrimps, along with whole capers, and boil for 10 minutes.

Serve

Serve the fish on a napkin with the sauce in a tureen.

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.

Capers + flourtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,024 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Shrimp + buttertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,931 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,488 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Fish + shrimptop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together252 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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: Enriches the sauce with fat and smooth body once combined with flour.
Baked flour: Thickens the boiling water into a sauce when kneaded with butter.
Shrimps: Adds savoury, briny flavour to the pounded sauce base.
Capers: Add sharp, acidic flavour that cuts through the rich butter sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer the fish gently without boiling hard. Vigorous boiling can break the delicate skin and flake the flesh, so the fish should be brought to a boil, skimmed, then held at a gentle simmer.

“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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John Dory with Caper Sauce