Why it works: Capers and sauce work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 678 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Boiled Mutton with Caper Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Place the mutton in a pot with plenty of salted water.
Cook for 12 minutes per pound.
Remove the mutton and wipe it carefully with a hot, wet cloth.
Butter the mutton all over.
Serve with caper sauce made by adding capers to drawn butter sauce.
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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Capers + saucetop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together678 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together15,338 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Butter + caperstop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,637 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,781 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Mutton + saucetop 25% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,087 recipes
Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).
Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
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