Skip to main content
Sauce

Caper Sauce with One Egg

A savory sauce made with broth, butter, flour, egg yolk, and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,024 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Caper Sauce with One Egg

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Bring the broth to a boil.

  2. Stir in the butter and flour mixture, and cook for 2 minutes.

  3. Add the egg yolk and chopped capers.

  4. Bring to a boil again and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + caperstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that the other ingredients thicken.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Egg yolk
Enriches the sauce and helps thicken it as it gently heats.
Capers
Add sharp acidity and a salty, briny flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk, then boiling again. Egg yolk thickens through gentle heat, but its proteins can scramble and turn grainy if they get too hot. Boiling the sauce again after the yolk goes in risks curdling it, so the texture can be lost.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Capersthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, egg. 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.

More caper sauce recipes

Brown 12Substitute 10Mock 6Anchovy 3for Boiled Mutton 3Egg 3 See all 218 →

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipesCurry SauceCurry Sauce59 recipes