Skip to main content
Sauce

Caper Sauce

A buttery sauce flavored with capers and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Caper Sauce

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

  1. Mince one tablespoon of capers and cut another tablespoon into halves.

  2. Mix the minced and halved capers with one tablespoon of vinegar.

  3. Stir the mixture into ½ cup of melted butter over low heat until hot.

  4. Pour the sauce into a serving dish.

  5. Optionally, add 1 teaspoon of lemon juice for extra flavor.

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 + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Capers + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Capers + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,453 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 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

Capers
Add a briny, sharp bite that cuts through the richness of the butter.
Butter
Forms the rich, smooth base that carries the capers and gives the sauce its body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the fat of the butter.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture into the butter over low heat until hot. Butter is an emulsion of fat and water that can separate or scorch if overheated. Gentle heat warms the sauce evenly while keeping it smooth and glossy.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (capers, vinegar, butter):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against capers, vinegar, butter. 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.

More caper sauce recipes

Brown 12Substitute 10Mock 6Anchovy 3for Boiled Mutton 3Egg 3 See all 218 →

You might also like

Hot Lemon Cream SauceHot Lemon Cream Sauce11 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes