Name: Piquante Sauce
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons minced pickles; 2 tablespoons minced shallots; 2 tablespoons minced olives; 2 tablespoons capers; 1 tablespoon lemon juice; 1 tablespoon caper vinegar; 1 cup Madeira sauce

Why it works: Shallot and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 405 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Piquante Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

Combine the minced pickles, shallots, olives, capers, lemon juice, and caper vinegar in a bowl.
Mix this mixture into the Madeira sauce.
Simmer for a few minutes.

Serve

Serve with boiled beef, pigs' feet, calf's head, boiled tongue, calf's liver, or pork dishes.

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.

Shallot + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together405 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,688 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,222 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,523 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,922 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Madeira sauce: Forms the base of the sauce, providing body and a rich, savoury flavour.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the base.
Caper vinegar: Contributes sharp acidity and tang that cuts through the savoury base.
Capers: Add a sharp, briny flavour that stands out in the sauce.
Shallots: Add a mild, sharp aromatic note to the sauce.

Swap the lemon

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

Avocadofits better
Limefits about as well
Lemonthe original
Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, olive, capers, vinegar, sauce. 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.