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Dessert

Piquante Sauce

A tangy sauce made with onion, vinegar, gravy, pepper, salt, capers or gherkins, thickened with browned flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and flour 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 ↓

Piquante Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a small saucepan, combine the chopped onion and vinegar.

  2. Boil until nearly all the vinegar has evaporated.

  3. Add the gravy and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  4. Stir in the chopped capers or gherkins.

  5. Thicken the sauce slightly with browned flour and serve.

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. Capers + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Adds savory aromatic flavor as it softens in the reduced vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the sauce its sharp, piquant character.
Gravy
Forms the savory liquid base of the sauce.
Browned flour
Thickens the sauce and adds a toasted, nutty flavor.

The step that matters

Boil until nearly all the vinegar has evaporated. Boiling off most of the vinegar mellows its sharp acidity and concentrates the onion's flavor. Leaving too much vinegar makes the finished sauce harsh and overly sour.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, capers, flour. 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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