Name: Caper Sauce for Leg of Lamb
Ingredients: drippings from steaming leg of lamb; capers; pepper; coarse sea salt

Why it works: Lamb and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,165 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Caper Sauce for Leg of Lamb

Ingredients

drippings from steaming leg of lamb
capers
pepper
coarse sea salt

Directions

Make drawn butter gravy from the drippings left from steaming the leg of lamb.
Add capers to the gravy, adjusting the amount to your taste.
Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

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.

Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,165 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Capers + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,088 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lamb + caperstop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together86 recipes

Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).