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Piquant Sauce

A sauce made from bone broth, butter, flour, capers, and pickled onions or gherkins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,024 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Piquant Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare 1 cup of soup from bones or other ingredients.

  2. In a pan, brown ¼ cup of flour in ½ tablespoon of butter.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the soup to the pan and let it simmer over low heat for a few minutes.

  2. Stir in 2 teaspoons of minced capers and the chopped pickled onions or gherkins.

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. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Capers + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + caperstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Browned in butter to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Butter
Carries the flour's browning and adds richness to the roux.
Soup
Forms the liquid base that the roux thickens into a sauce.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny flavour that gives the sauce its piquancy.
Pickled onions or gherkins
Add acidity and tang that brighten the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in butter. Flour browned too little stays pasty and tastes raw, while over-browning turns it bitter. Cooking it in fat coats the starch grains so they thicken smoothly when liquid is added rather than clumping.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, 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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