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Eggs with Caper Sauce

Eggs served with a sauce of butter, flour, milk, salt, and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Eggs with Caper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in flour and cook for 1 minute.

  3. Gradually add milk while stirring continuously until thickened.

  4. Add salt and capers with their vinegar, then stir to combine.

Serve

  1. Place eggs yolk side up in a serving dish.

  2. Pour the hot sauce over the eggs and 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. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 and carries flavour while forming the roux base.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the sauce, which thickens as it heats.
Capers
Add sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the rich sauce.
Eggs
Serve as the main dish, with their yolks set against the warm sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually add milk while stirring continuously until thickened. Adding milk slowly while stirring keeps the flour evenly dispersed, preventing lumps. Starch grains swell as the sauce heats, so it thickens smoothly only with constant stirring.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, vinegar, 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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