Why it works: Capers and pasta share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 89 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
The recipe
Ingredients
Contains: wheat, soy (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)
Directions
Make the sauce
Bring large pot of water to a boil.
In a medium saucepan, heat oil over medium heat.
Add onion and tempeh “bacon” and cook, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned, 2 minutes.
Add potatoes to saucepan and cook, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned, 5 to 7 minutes.
Add wine and basil to pan and cook until thickened slightly, about 2 minutes.
Add olives, capers and broth and cook, stirring occasionally, until reduced by half, about 8 to 10 minutes.
Cook the pasta and serve
Add 1 tablespoon salt and pasta to boiling water, stirring to prevent sticking.
Cook pasta until just tender, about 10 minutes. Drain well.
Add parsley to sauce and stir well.
Season to taste with salt and freshly ground pepper.
Add pasta and toss to coat.
Serve hot.
This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.
Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.
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Capers + pastatop 2% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together89 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Basil + parsleytop 2% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together2,351 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
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Onion + potatotop 2% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together9,019 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Olive + basiltop 3% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together4,868 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Potato + parsleytop 3% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together2,855 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Potatoes
- Browning and starch add body and substance to the sauce as they soften.
- Olives
- Salty, briny flavor that seasons the sauce as it reduces.
- White wine
- Acidity and aroma that lift the flavor of the sauce as it thickens.
- Vegetable broth
- Liquid that reduces into a concentrated, savory sauce base.
- Tempeh bacon
- Browning and savory, smoky flavor from the onion-tempeh start of the sauce.
- Pasta
- Bowtie pasta provides the starchy base that the sauce coats.
The step that matters
Reducing the olives, capers and broth until reduced by half. Cooking long enough concentrates the broth into a thick, flavorful sauce; stopping early leaves it thin and watery, while the pasta cooks separately so it can be tossed in at the end.
Flavor stand-ins for the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, potato, white wine, basil, capers, pasta, parsley):
- Tomatobetter flavor fit
- Shallotbetter flavor fit
- Carrotbetter flavor fit
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against olive, potato, white wine, basil, capers, pasta, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).
“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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