Skip to main content
Main

Broto Butter Sauce

A brown butter sauce with ancho pepper, capers, tarragon vinegar, Harvey's sauce, and brown gravy for fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Capers and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 379 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Broto Butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the ancho pepper and capers very finely or pound them.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter until it becomes brown.

  3. Add the chopped ancho and capers to the butter.

  4. Stir in the tarragon vinegar, Harvey's sauce, and a small amount of brown gravy.

  5. Simmer for five minutes and serve with broiled or boiled fish.

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. Capers + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together379 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Capers + saucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Pepper + caperstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melts and browns to give the sauce a rich, nutty flavour and a fatty base.
Ancho pepper
Adds chopped pepper pieces and mild heat to the sauce.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny bite that cuts through the richness of the butter.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and tarragon aroma to balance the browned butter.

The step that matters

Melting the butter until it browns. Butter that is cooked too long can turn from brown to burnt, giving a bitter taste. Watching the colour closely lets the milk solids toast for nuttiness without scorching.

Swap the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, tarragon, vinegar, sauce):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Capersthe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, tarragon, vinegar, sauce. 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