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Sauce

Caper Sauce, to Imitate

A sauce made from parsley, butter, salt, and vinegar that imitates capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Caper Sauce, to Imitate

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the parsley slowly until it turns a bad color.

  2. Chop the parsley, but do not chop it finely.

  3. Melt the butter in a pan.

  4. Add the chopped parsley, salt, and vinegar to the melted butter.

  5. Bring to a boil 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. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Parsley + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Parsley
Forms the body and green flavor of the sauce, with its texture set by the chopping.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying the flavor of the herbs and salt.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the butter.

The step that matters

Boil the parsley slowly. Boiling parsley for too long destroys its chlorophyll, turning it dull and olive-brown instead of bright green. Slow boiling softens the leaves while keeping the color bright. The record's own wording says to boil until it turns a bad color, so the cook should stop as soon as color shifts.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, vinegar. 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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