Name: Caper Sauce
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons capers; 1 tablespoon lemon juice; a speck of cayenne; butter

Why it works: Capers and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,222 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Caper Sauce

Ingredients

2 tablespoons capers
1 tablespoon lemon juice
a speck of cayenne
butter

Directions

Make a butter sauce.
Stir in the lemon juice, capers, and cayenne.
Serve with stewed or boiled fish or mutton.

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.

Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,222 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,637 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Forms the rich base of the sauce and carries the flavour of the other ingredients.
Capers: Add a sharp, briny bite that cuts through the richness of the butter.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the fat of the butter.