Name: Caper Sauce for Fish
Ingredients: ½ cup melted butter; 1 small piece of glaze; 2 tablespoons capers; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper; 1 tablespoon essence of anchovies

Why it works: Capers and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,088 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Caper Sauce for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Melt the butter in a saucepan.
Add a small piece of glaze to the melted butter.
Once the sauce is ready, stir in the capers, salt, pepper, and essence of anchovies.

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.

Capers + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,088 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Butter + caperstop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,637 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Melted butter: Forms the fat base of the sauce, carrying flavour and giving it a rich, smooth body.
Capers: Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the richness of the butter.
Essence of anchovies: Adds a deep, savoury saltiness that rounds out the sauce.