Name: Tabtabe Sauce
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon capers, chopped; 1 tablespoon pickles, chopped; 1 tablespoon olives, chopped; 1 tablespoon parsley, chopped; 1 tablespoon butter; ½ cup salad dressing

Why it works: Capers and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tabtabe Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Chop the capers, pickles, olives, and parsley finely.
Mix the chopped ingredients with the butter.
Add the mixture to the salad dressing and stir well.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,550 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,688 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,649 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Olive + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,887 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: Adds a sharp, briny acidity that brightens the sauce.
Pickles: Contribute tangy acidity and crunch to the sauce.
Olives: Add salty, briny flavour and a savoury depth.
Parsley: Adds fresh, green aroma and a mild herbal flavour.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and a smoother, rounder mouthfeel.
Salad dressing: Forms the liquid base that the chopped ingredients are stirred into.

“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.