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Sauce

Vienna Sauce

A mayonnaise-based sauce with capers, parsley, pickles, olives, and stewed tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vienna Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine the Mayonnaise Dressing, capers, parsley, pickles, and olives.

  2. In a saucepan, cook the strained tomatoes until reduced to 2 tablespoons.

  3. Add the reduced tomatoes to the mixture and stir well.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Olive + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Capers + olivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

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

  5. Capers + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together568 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

Mayonnaise dressing
Forms the creamy base that carries the other ingredients.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and color, and concentrate their flavor when reduced.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny flavor that cuts through the richness.
Pickles
Add acidity and a crisp, tangy bite.
Olives
Add a salty, savory note.

The step that matters

Reducing the strained tomatoes to 2 tablespoons. Cooking the tomatoes down concentrates their flavor and removes excess water, so the sauce stays thick and does not become thin or watery when stirred into the mayonnaise base.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Kalefits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against capers, parsley, olive. 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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