Skip to main content
Sauce

Canape Sauce

A creamy sauce made with hard‑boiled egg yolks, butter, anchovy fillets, capers, vinegar or lemon juice, mustard, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Capers and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Canape Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rub the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs until fine.

  2. Add the butter and stir until creamy.

  3. Mash the anchovy fillets and add to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the capers, tarragon vinegar or lemon juice, and mustard.

  5. Blanch the parsley in boiling water, chop finely, and add ½ teaspoon 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 + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tarragon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Tarragon + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 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

Egg yolks
Their fat and emulsifying lecithin give the sauce a smooth, creamy body.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky texture that softens the sauce.
Anchovy fillets
Supply deep savory flavor that gives the sauce its character.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny bite that cuts through the richness.
Tarragon vinegar or lemon juice
Provides acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the fat.

The step that matters

Rub the yolks until fine. Yolks must be broken down completely before the butter is added. Lumps left in the yolk will not smooth out later, so the sauce ends up grainy rather than creamy.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, anchovy, capers, tarragon, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Lettucefits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, anchovy, capers, tarragon, parsley. 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

Mixed MustardMixed Mustard9 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes