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Sauce

Piquante Sauce

A hot sauce made from brown sauce, claret wine or vinegar, onion, capers, pickles, and salt, served with beef.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,381 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Piquante Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Make the brown sauce and keep it hot.

  2. Add the claret wine or vinegar, chopped onion, capers, and pickles to the hot brown sauce.

  3. Serve hot with beef.

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. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Sauce + caperstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + oniontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Wine + oniontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Wine + caperstop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together368 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

Sauce and onion barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,474 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

What each ingredient does

Brown sauce
Forms the savory, thickened base that the other flavorings are added to.
Claret wine or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich brown sauce and sharpens its flavor.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny flavor that contrasts with the richness of the sauce.
Pickles
Contribute tangy acidity and crunch to the sauce.
Onion
Adds a pungent aroma and savory sharpness to the sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, wine, capers):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, wine, capers. 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.

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