Name: Mock Caper Sauce
Ingredients: ½ cup melted butter; 2 teaspoons lemon juice or vinegar; pickled gherkins, chopped into small bits

Why it works: Butter and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Mock Caper Sauce

Ingredients

½ cup melted butter
2 teaspoons lemon juice or vinegar
pickled gherkins, chopped into small bits

Directions

Chop the pickled gherkins into small bits, slightly smaller than capers.
Combine the gherkins in a bowl with the melted butter and lemon juice or vinegar.
Add a few drops of essence of shallots or garlic for flavor.

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.

Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 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

Melted butter: Carries the flavor and gives the sauce a rich, smooth body.
Lemon juice or vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the butter.
Pickled gherkins: Provide tangy, briny bits that give the sauce its caper-like texture and flavor.

“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.