Skip to main content
Main

Piquante Sauce

A tangy sauce made with shallots, gherkins, capers, vinegar, thyme, bay leaf, pepper, and white stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shallot and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 405 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Piquante Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine shallots, gherkins, and capers.

  2. Add white vinegar, thyme, bay leaf, and pepper.

  3. Simmer until the vinegar is reduced to ¼ cup.

  4. Add white stock and boil for a few minutes.

  5. Skim the surface, remove thyme and bay leaf, and serve in a gravy boat.

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. Shallot + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Capers + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Shallots or small onions
Provide savoury sweetness and aromatic body as they soften into the sauce.
Gherkins
Add sharp acidity and a pickled bite that cuts through the richness of the sauce.
Capers
Contribute briny, pungent flavour that gives the sauce its piquant character.
White vinegar
Adds acidity; simmering reduces it, concentrating its sharpness into the sauce.
White stock
Supplies the liquid base and savoury depth of the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer until the vinegar is reduced to ¼ cup. Reducing the vinegar concentrates its acidity and flavour. Stopping too early leaves the sauce thin and harsh, while over-reducing makes it overly sharp and salty once the stock is added.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Dillfits about as well
  4. Thymethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, capers, vinegar, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes