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Sauce

Caper Sauce

A butter-based sauce with capers, caper liquor, and optional anchovy essence, served with boiled mutton or fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Caper Sauce

Why it works: Capers and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 473 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

Caper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the capers and a little of their liquor.

  3. Simmer for 1 to 2 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled mutton or fish, adding anchovy essence if desired.

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. Capers + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together473 recipes

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

  2. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + caperstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,637 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

Butter
Melts to form the rich base that carries the sauce's flavour and smooth mouthfeel.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the richness of the butter.
Caper liquor
Adds more caper flavour and saltiness, loosening the sauce slightly.

“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 →

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