Name: Caper Sauce
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons capers; ½ pint white wine

Why it works: Capers and white wine work together. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 265 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Caper Sauce

Ingredients

2 tablespoons capers
½ pint white wine

Directions

Cut capers in halves or bruise them.
Put them into a saucepan with ½ pint of white wine.
Heat gently until warmed through.
Serve over your favorite dish.

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 + white winetop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together265 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

Capers: Provide a sharp, briny acidity that brightens the sauce.
White wine: Adds acidity and liquid, carrying the caper flavor through the sauce.

“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.