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Caper Sauce

A sauce made from capers, water, flour, butter, salt, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Caper Sauce

Why it works: Capers and flour 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

Prepare the capers

  1. Boil capers with water in a saucepan for 10 minutes without a lid.

  2. Mash the capers with a wooden spoon to bruise them.

Make the sauce

  1. Bring the water to a boil.

  2. Stir in flour mixed with cold water.

  3. When thickened, stir in butter until dissolved.

  4. Add a pinch of salt and vinegar to taste if the sauce is not acidic enough.

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 + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Capers + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Capers + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,453 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Flour and butter 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

Capers
Give the sauce a sharp, briny flavour and a bit of texture.
Fine flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells and sets when heated in water.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy finish to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens and balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the boiling water. Flour added to hot liquid can clump if not stirred well. Keep stirring as the mixture heats so the starch swells evenly and the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the capers

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, 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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