Why it works: Sauce and capers work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 678 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Sauce, Caper
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the white sauce using half milk and half stock.
Add the chopped capers to the white sauce.
Season with salt and pepper.
Serve with boiled mutton.
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.
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Sauce + caperstop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together678 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Capers + peppertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,088 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Sauce + peppertop 27% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together15,303 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sauce and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,303 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
Swap the capers
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, pepper):
- Parsleyfits better
- Tarragonfits about as well
- Capersthe original
- Celeryfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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