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Sauce

Caper Sauce

A quick sauce of butter, capers, vinegar, and mutton broth, seasoned with salt and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Caper Sauce

Why it works: Capers and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,088 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Caper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, stir together melted butter, capers, and vinegar.

  2. Add the water from boiled mutton, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil and serve.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Capers + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Melted butter
Provides fat and a rich, smooth body to the sauce.
Capers
Adds a briny, tangy flavour that cuts through the richness of the butter.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the butter.
Water from boiled mutton
Adds savoury meat flavour and thins the butter into a pourable sauce.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a boil. Butter can separate if it overheats or boils hard, leaving a greasy sauce. Bring it just to a boil and remove it from the heat promptly so the emulsion stays smooth.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, vinegar, mutton, pepper. 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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