Name: Caper Sauce
Ingredients: 1 pint boiling water; 2 tablespoons butter; Salt to taste; 2 tablespoons capers

Why it works: Butter and capers are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,637 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Caper Sauce

Ingredients

1 pint boiling water
2 tablespoons butter
Salt to taste
2 tablespoons capers

Directions

Boil the water in a saucepan.
Add the butter and salt to taste.
Thicken the mixture as desired.
Stir in the capers.
Serve with boiled mutton.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + caperstop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,637 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Adds richness and a smooth, rounded body to the sauce as it melts into the liquid.
Capers: Their briny, sharp flavour cuts through the richness of the butter and adds aroma.

“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.