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Sauce

Caper Sauce for Boiled Mutton

A buttery caper sauce for boiled mutton, made with butter, flour, salt, pepper, water, and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 for Boiled Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour, salt, and pepper, cooking for 1-2 minutes.

  3. Gradually add the water, stirring constantly until the sauce thickens.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the capers.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour while it melts into the base.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and water.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Adding the water gradually. Adding liquid slowly while stirring constantly keeps the flour dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Turmericfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Capersthe original

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