Why it works: Capers and sauce work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 678 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Caper Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare drawn butter sauce.
When ready to serve, drain the capers from their liquid.
Add the capers to the drawn butter sauce.
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.
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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.
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Capers + saucetop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together678 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together15,338 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Capers + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,637 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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