Name: Sauce Piquante
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons lemon juice; 2 tablespoons capers; 2 tablespoons chopped pickles; 2 tablespoons chopped olives; 1 teaspoon finely chopped chives or ½ teaspoon onion juice; 2 cups drawn butter sauce

Why it works: Capers and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 245 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sauce Piquante

Ingredients

2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons capers
2 tablespoons chopped pickles
2 tablespoons chopped olives
1 teaspoon finely chopped chives or ½ teaspoon onion juice
2 cups drawn butter sauce

Directions

In a bowl, combine lemon juice, capers, chopped pickles, chopped olives, and chives or onion juice.
Mix well into the drawn butter sauce until fully incorporated.

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 + chivetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together245 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Capers + olivetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,688 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lemon + caperstop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,222 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Olive + chivetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,633 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Lemon + olivetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,922 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Capers: Add sharp, salty brininess that cuts through the richness of the butter.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fatty butter sauce.
Drawn butter sauce: Forms the rich, fatty base that the other ingredients are blended into.
Chopped pickles: Contribute acidity and tangy crunch to balance the butter.
Chopped olives: Add salty, savory flavor and texture to the sauce.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (capers, olive, chive, butter, sauce):

Avocadofits better
Lemonthe original
Limefits about as well
Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against capers, olive, chive, butter, sauce. 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.