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Sauce

Piquant Sauce

A sauce made with brown sauce, vinegar, capers, shallot, pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 405 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Piquant Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine capers and shallot in vinegar and simmer until shallot is soft.

  2. Pour in the brown sauce and bring to a boil.

  3. Add pepper and salt to taste.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Capers + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Sauce + caperstop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Vinegar + shallottop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Capers + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,088 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown sauce
Forms the base of the sauce, providing body and savory flavor.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and cuts the richness of the sauce.
Capers
Contribute a sharp, briny bite that gives the sauce its piquant character.
Shallot
Softens during simmering, adding a mild, sweet onion-like aroma.

The step that matters

Simmer the shallot until soft. Shallot cooked in vinegar softens and mellows its sharp raw bite. Undercooked shallot stays harsh and can taste raw in the finished sauce.

Flavor stand-ins for the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, vinegar, shallot, pepper):

  1. Tarragonabout as good a flavor fit
  2. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, vinegar, shallot, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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