Skip to main content
Sauce

Caper Sauce for Fish

A quick sauce of melted butter, veal gravy, anchovy essence, chili vinegar, capers, and optional mushroom catsup for fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Caper Sauce for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine the melted butter with the veal gravy or jelly.

  2. Add the essence of anchovies and chili vinegar or cayenne to taste.

  3. Stir in the capers.

  4. If you don't have gravy, substitute with mushroom catsup or Harvey's sauce.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Capers + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together266 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. Vinegar + caperstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,453 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Melted butter
Forms the rich base of the sauce and carries the other flavours with a smooth, fatty texture.
Veal gravy or jelly
Adds savoury body and depth, thickening the sauce slightly as it sets.
Essence of anchovies
Contributes a salty, savoury umami note that deepens the overall flavour.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the richness of the butter.

Swap the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, veal, vinegar, mushroom):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, veal, vinegar, mushroom. 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.

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes