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Sauce

Caper Sauce for Fish

A quick sauce made with consommé, browned flour, butter, spices, anchovy essence, lemon juice, capers, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Caper Sauce for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine light consommé with browned flour and butter.

  2. Season the mixture with cayenne pepper, grated nutmeg, essence of anchovies, lemon juice, chopped capers, and vinegar.

  3. Stir well and heat until warmed through.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + caperstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Nutmeg + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together211 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Browned flour
Thickens the consommé and adds a toasted, nutty depth to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich mouthfeel and helps carry the seasonings.
Light consommé
Serves as the savory liquid base that the sauce is built on.
Capers
Add a briny, sharp flavour that cuts through the richness of the butter.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its savoury notes.

The step that matters

Stir well and heat until warmed through. Browned flour and butter can clump or scorch if left unstirred over heat. Stirring keeps the flour evenly dispersed so the sauce thickens smoothly, and gentle heat avoids boiling off the delicate acidity and aroma of the capers and lemon.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, pepper, lemon, capers, vinegar. 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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