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Sauce

Caper Sauce, to Imitate

A sauce made with parsley, butter, salt, and vinegar, boiled to imitate capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Caper Sauce, to Imitate

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the parsley

  1. Boil the parsley slowly until it turns a bad color.

  2. Cut the parsley into small pieces, but do not chop it finely.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the parsley.

  2. Stir in the salt and vinegar, then bring to a boil.

  3. Serve immediately.

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. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Parsley + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 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

Parsley
Provides the herbal aroma and green color that define the sauce.
Butter
Provides richness and a smooth, velvety body as the fat base of the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the rich butter.

The step that matters

Serve immediately.. Butter sauces thicken and can separate as they cool, so serving while warm keeps the sauce smooth and glossy.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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