Name: Caper Butter
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon capers; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1/16 teaspoon black pepper; 1 ounce cold butter

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 Butter

Ingredients

1 tablespoon capers
¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt
1/16 teaspoon black pepper
1 ounce cold butter

Directions

Make the caper butter

Chop the capers very finely.
Rub the chopped capers through a sieve with a wooden spoon.
Mix the sieved capers with salt, pepper, and cold butter.

Serve

Spread a layer of the caper butter on a dish.
Serve fish on top of the caper butter.

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).
Capers + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,637 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Pepper + buttertop 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

Capers: Adds a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the richness of the butter.
Butter: Provides fat and a creamy, spreadable base that carries the caper flavour.