Skip to main content
Sauce

Caper Sauce

A sauce made from mutton broth, flour, egg, and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Caper Sauce

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Skim the fat from the mutton broth until only a few small bubbles remain.

  2. In a small bowl, mix the flour with a little cold water until smooth.

  3. Add the flour mixture to the broth and bring to a boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the chopped hard boiled egg and capers.

  2. Serve warm.

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.

  1. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + caperstop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  4. Mutton + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,648 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Mutton + caperstop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together199 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Mutton broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries its savory flavor.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth sauce when heated with liquid.
Hard boiled egg
Adds body and a mild, rich texture to the sauce.
Capers
Adds a sharp, briny acidity that cuts the richness of the broth.

The step that matters

Mix the flour with cold water until smooth. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, because its starch swells unevenly. Mixing it with cold water first disperses the starch so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the capers

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, egg. 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.

More caper sauce recipes

Brown 12Substitute 10Mock 6Anchovy 3for Boiled Mutton 3Egg 3 See all 218 →

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipesCurry SauceCurry Sauce59 recipes