Name: Caper Sauce
Ingredients: 1 pint white sauce; 2 tablespoons capers; salt to taste; white pepper to taste

Why it works: Sauce and capers work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 678 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Caper Sauce

Ingredients

1 pint white sauce
2 tablespoons capers
salt to taste
white pepper to taste

Directions

Make a pint of white sauce and let it boil for 2 minutes.
Chop the capers a few times or use them whole.
After the sauce has boiled, add the capers along with salt and white pepper.
Use the sauce as desired.

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.

Sauce + caperstop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together678 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Capers + white peppertop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together92 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Sauce + white peppertop 33% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together525 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

White sauce: Forms the creamy base that carries the flavour and gives the sauce its body.
Capers: Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the richness of the white sauce.