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Sauce

Brown Caper Sauce

A brown sauce made with veal or beef gravy, capers, pickle liquor or chili vinegar, cayenne, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,453 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Brown Caper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Thicken the veal or beef gravy as directed for Sauce Tournee.

  2. Add the capers and pickle liquor or chili vinegar to the gravy.

  3. If using pickle liquor, add cayenne to taste.

  4. Season with coarse sea salt.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Veal + caperstop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together198 recipes

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

  3. Veal + vinegartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together948 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal or beef gravy
Forms the base of the sauce and provides its savoury, meaty body.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny bite that cuts through the richness of the gravy.
Pickle liquor or chili vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its savoury depth.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy. The sauce depends on the gravy reaching the right body before the other ingredients go in. Thin gravy makes a sauce that runs off the plate, while overcooked starch can turn it gluey, so keep the thickening gentle and check the consistency as it cooks.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Pepperfits about as well
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, vinegar. 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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