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Caper Sauce

A buttery sauce flavored with pickled capers, thickened with flour and egg.

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

Why it works: Capers and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,024 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Caper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Add the pickled capers and simmer for a few minutes.

  3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the broth, flour, and egg until smooth.

  4. Gradually add the broth mixture to the saucepan, stirring constantly until thickened.

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 + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + caperstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, giving it body and a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the sauce its body.
Egg
Helps bind and thicken the sauce, adding richness and smoothness.
Broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savory flavour and moisture.
Pickled capers
Add sharp, acidic, briny flavour that cuts through the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Adding the broth mixture to the saucepan. Stirring constantly while adding the liquid keeps the flour and egg dispersed so they thicken evenly instead of clumping. Heat that is too high can scramble the egg, so low heat and steady stirring help the sauce become smooth and thickened.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Capersthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, egg. 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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