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Skate, with Caper Sauce

A skate fillet simmered in a caper butter sauce.

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

Skate, with Caper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and poach

  1. Roll up the skate pieces and tie them with string.

  2. Boil water with salt and vinegar, then gently add the skate.

  3. Boil for 20 minutes, adding the liver 5 minutes before done.

  4. Remove the fish, drain it, and place it on a hot dish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a saucepan, melt ¾ pint of butter and stir in 2 tablespoons of bruised capers.

  2. Pour the caper sauce over the fish and serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Vinegar + caperstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,453 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Liver + caperstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together47 recipes

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

  4. Liver + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Vinegar + livertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

White skate
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in simmering liquid until tender.
Butter
Melted to make the sauce, adding richness and a smooth, pourable texture.
Capers
Bruised and stirred into the butter to add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts the richness.

The step that matters

Gently adding the skate to the boiling water. Fish is delicate, and a hard, rolling boil can break up the flesh and toughen the proteins. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer cooks the skate evenly and keeps it intact.

Swap the capers

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, liver, 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.

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