Name: Caper Sauce
Ingredients: a few capers; ½ cup cullis; a few drops of anchovy essence; 1 lemon; 1 teaspoon sugar; fish stock (if for meagre)

Why it works: Capers and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,222 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Caper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Combine capers, cullis, anchovy essence, and lemon juice in a bowl.
Add sugar and mix well.
If making for meagre, use fish stock instead of cullis.

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.

Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,222 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Capers + anchovytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together473 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Anchovy + fishtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together637 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Capers + fishtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together165 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Lemon + fishtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,889 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Capers: Provide a sharp, briny bite that gives the sauce its characteristic flavour.
Cullis: Forms the savoury base of the sauce and carries the other flavours.
Lemon: Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness.
Sugar: Adds a small amount of sweetness to offset the sharpness of the lemon and capers.

“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.