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Sauce

Sauce Piquante

A savory sauce made with gherkins, capers, shallots, pepper, vinegar, stock, thickening, glaze, and anchovy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and shallot 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 ↓

Sauce Piquante

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine gherkins, capers, shallots, pepper, and vinegar in a stew‑pan.

  2. Boil for about 4 minutes.

  3. Add stock, brown thickening, glaze, and anchovy.

  4. Boil and skim the sauce.

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 + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Capers + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together473 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  4. Shallot + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Capers + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 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

Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the rich stock and glaze.
Brown thickening
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the other flavours.
Glaze
Adds body and concentrated savoury depth to the sauce.
Anchovy
Contributes salty, savoury depth without a fishy taste.
Capers
Provide briny, sharp notes that give the sauce its piquancy.

The step that matters

Boil and skim the sauce. Boiling gently reduces the liquid and concentrates flavour, while skimming removes fat and scum that would otherwise make the sauce cloudy or greasy.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (capers, pepper, vinegar, anchovy):

  1. Mustardfits about as well
  2. Shallotthe original
  3. Lettucefits less well
  4. Kalefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against capers, pepper, vinegar, anchovy. 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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