Skip to main content
Sauce

Piquante or Sharp Sauce

A tangy sauce made with brown sauce, vinegar, capers, gherkin, onion, salt, and pepper.

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

Why it works: Capers and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,381 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Piquante or Sharp Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine onion and vinegar in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil and reduce significantly.

  2. Add brown sauce, capers, gherkin, salt, and pepper if needed. Bring to a boil again.

  3. Simmer for 5 minutes 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 + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Sauce + caperstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Capers + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Vinegar + oniontop 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

Brown sauce
Forms the savoury base and body of the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity, which is concentrated by reducing the liquid.
Capers
Add a briny, sharp bite that stands out against the rich brown sauce.
Gherkin
Adds tangy, pickled sharpness and some texture.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, adding aroma and depth.

The step that matters

Reducing the vinegar significantly. Boiling the vinegar down concentrates its acetic acid and drives off harsh, sharp volatile notes. If it is not reduced enough, the finished sauce can taste sour and raw. Cooking it down well mellows the acidity before the brown sauce is added.

Swap the onion

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

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

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