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Sauce

Piquante Sauce

A hot sauce made with onion, capers, vinegar, tarragon, brown gravy, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 379 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Piquante Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the onion.

  2. Cut the capers in half.

Make the sauce

  1. Simmer the onion and capers in the vinegar until nearly evaporated.

  2. Add the gravy and salt if necessary.

Serve

  1. Serve very hot.

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 + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together379 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Vinegar + tarragontop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + tarragontop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,568 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Spanish onion
Provides a savoury aromatic base that softens and sweetens as it simmers.
Capers
Add a briny, sharp bite that cuts through the richness of the gravy.
Vinegar
Supplies acidity, and its tang concentrates as the liquid reduces.
Brown gravy
Forms the liquid base, giving the sauce body and savoury depth.
Tarragon
Adds a faint aniseed-like aroma that complements the sharp flavours.

The step that matters

Simmering the onion and capers in the vinegar until nearly evaporated. Reducing the vinegar drives off its harsh, raw edge and concentrates the sharp flavour, while the onion softens. Stopping too early leaves the sauce sour and sharp, and reducing too far makes it harsh and overly concentrated before the gravy is added.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (capers, vinegar, tarragon, meat):

  1. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  2. Mustardbetter flavor fit
  3. Lettucebetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against capers, vinegar, tarragon, meat. 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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