Name: Caper Sauce
Ingredients: 3 tablespoons capers; 1 tablespoon caper liquor; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; anchovy essence to taste

Why it works: Capers and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 473 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

Caper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare a white sauce.
Add 3 tablespoons of capers and 1 tablespoon of their liquor to the sauce.
For serving with fish, add pepper, coarse sea salt, and anchovy essence to taste.

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.

Capers + anchovytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together473 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Capers + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,088 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + anchovytop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,232 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Capers: Add a sharp, briny flavor that cuts the richness of the white sauce.
Caper liquor: Adds acidity and salt from the brine, sharpening the sauce's flavor.