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Sauce

Caper Sauce

A sauce made with butter, flour, milk, capers, caper vinegar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Caper Sauce

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 Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

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

  2. Mix in the flour until smooth, then remove from heat.

  3. Gradually add the milk, stirring continuously, and cook for 10 minutes.

  4. Season with salt, then add the chopped capers and caper vinegar.

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. 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. Butter + caperstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,637 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
Fat that carries flavour and gives the sauce a rich, smooth body.
Flour
Starch that thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Milk
Liquid base that the flour thickens into a creamy sauce.
Capers
Bring a salty, tangy bite that cuts through the richness.

The step that matters

Adding the milk gradually while stirring. Flour clumps when liquid is poured in too fast. Adding the milk slowly and stirring constantly spreads the starch evenly, so the sauce thickens smooth instead of lumpy.

Swap the capers

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

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

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