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Caper Sauce

A savory sauce made with meat broth, butter, flour, lemon juice, pepper, and pickled capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Caper Sauce

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Caper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, bring the meat broth to a boil and skim off any foam.

  2. Mix the butter with the flour until smooth, then stir it into the boiling broth.

  3. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.

  4. Add the lemon juice, pepper, and capers (or nasturtium seeds).

Serve

  1. Serve in a sauce boat.

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.

  1. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + caperstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + caperstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Meat broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying the other flavors.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the broth as it cooks, giving the sauce body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the butter.
Pickled capers
Contribute a sharp, briny, acidic bite that stands out against the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter into the boiling broth. Flour clumps if added to hot liquid without being smoothed into the butter first. Stirring constantly while it cooks keeps the starch dispersed so the sauce thickens evenly and stays smooth.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, flour, pepper, capers):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, flour, pepper, capers. 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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