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Caper Sauce

A sauce made with butter, flour, meat broth, pepper, salt, and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for a minute.

  3. Add the liquid from the boiled meat and season with pepper and salt.

  4. Bring the sauce to a boil.

  5. Stir in the finely chopped capers and let it boil for one minute to soften them.

  6. If preferred, add the capers whole instead of chopping.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + caperstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 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. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it cooks with the butter.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the flour to the melted butter. Cooking the flour briefly in the butter removes its raw taste and helps prevent lumps when the liquid is added. Stirring constantly keeps the mixture smooth as it thickens.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, meat. 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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