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Sauce

Caper Sauce

A sauce made with capers, parsley, grated bread, coarse sea salt, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Caper Sauce

Why it works: Capers and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Caper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop half of the capers very finely.

  2. Leave the remaining capers whole.

  3. Chop the parsley.

  4. Mix the chopped parsley with the grated bread and coarse sea salt.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter until smooth.

  2. Add the mixture of parsley, bread, and salt to the melted butter.

  3. Add the capers to the mixture.

  4. Let the sauce boil briefly.

  5. Pour the sauce into a sauceboat.

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. Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Parsley + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

  5. Capers + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together307 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

Capers
Provide the sharp, briny acidity that gives the sauce its character.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma and a green colour to the sauce.
Grated bread
Thickens the butter and gives the sauce body and a soft texture.
Butter
Forms the rich fat base that carries the flavours and gives a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Let the sauce boil briefly. Bread starch needs to heat through to thicken the butter properly, but prolonged boiling can break the emulsion and make the sauce greasy or grainy.

Swap the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, bread, butter):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Capersthe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Sagefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, bread, butter. 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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