Skip to main content
Sauce

Piquant Sauce

A savory sauce made with capers, shallots, gherkins, vinegar, broth, and seasonings, thickened with brown thickening or butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Capers and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 405 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Piquant Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine capers, shallots, gherkins, pepper, and vinegar.

  2. Simmer gently for 3 minutes.

  3. Add broth, Liebig's extract, essence of anchovy, and brown thickening.

  4. Boil the sauce until thick and smooth, skimming carefully.

  5. If using butter and flour, mix them over moderate heat until colored, then moisten with stock and add to the sauce.

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 + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Capers + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together473 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Shallot + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Capers + peppertop 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

Capers
Provide a sharp, briny bite that defines the piquant character of the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the savory richness.
Brown thickening
Thickens the liquid so the sauce becomes smooth and coats the back of a spoon.
Broth or stock
Supplies the liquid base and savory depth for the sauce.
Essence of anchovy
Adds concentrated savory, salty depth that rounds out the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce until thick and smooth, skimming carefully. Boiling reduces the liquid and activates the starch in the thickening so the sauce sets smooth rather than lumpy. Skimming removes foam and impurities that would otherwise cloud the sauce and spoil its clean flavor.

Swap the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, pepper, vinegar, meat, anchovy, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, pepper, vinegar, meat, anchovy, butter. 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

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes