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Sauce

Caper and Anchovy Sauce

A savory sauce made with butter, flour, gravy, anchovy, capers, peppercorns, and spring onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and capers 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 and Anchovy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and mix in the flour.

  2. Add the gravy, chopped anchovy, capers, salt, and whole peppercorns.

  3. Add the whole spring onions and bring to a boil.

  4. Boil for 10 minutes, then remove the spring onions.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce with fish or boiled mutton.

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. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Capers + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Anchovy + caperstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together473 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 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
Melts with the flour to form a base that thickens the sauce and adds richness.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and gravy into a smooth, coating sauce.
Gravy
Supplies the liquid and savoury body of the sauce.
Anchovy
Adds deep savoury, salty flavour that builds as the sauce simmers.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Boiling for 10 minutes. The sauce must come to a boil to fully thicken the flour, and the boil then needs to be held long enough for the flour to cook out fully and the flavours to meld. Stopping early leaves a raw floury taste and a thin sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, anchovy, capers. 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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