Name: Caper Sauce
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon lemon juice; 2 tablespoons capers; 1 teaspoon essence of anchovy

Why it works: Lemon and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,222 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Caper Sauce

Ingredients

1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons capers
1 teaspoon essence of anchovy

Directions

Combine lemon juice, capers, and anchovy essence in a bowl. Mix well until combined.

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.

Lemon + caperstop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,222 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Capers + anchovytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together473 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Lemon + anchovytop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,080 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Capers: Add briny, sharp flavour that gives the sauce its characteristic bite.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the salty capers.
Anchovy essence: Adds a deep savoury, salty background flavour.

“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.