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 ↓
Black Butter
Ingredients
Directions
Brown the butter
Melt the butter in a frying pan until it becomes a rich brown color, but do not let it burn.
Finish the sauce
In another pan, heat the chopped capers with their vinegar, French vinegar, and Harvey sauce.
Remove the butter from the heat and stir in the caper mixture.
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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Capers + vinegartop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,453 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together13,513 recipes
Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
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
What each ingredient does
- Butter
- Browns to give a nutty flavor and a rich, fatty body to the sauce.
- Chopped capers
- Add briny, sharp bursts of flavor that cut through the rich butter.
- Caper vinegar
- Adds acidity that brightens the richness of the browned butter.
- French vinegar
- Adds sharp acidity that balances the fat in the sauce.
The step that matters
Browning the butter without burning it. Butter's milk solids toast as it heats, creating nutty, complex flavor. Once they pass golden brown, they turn bitter and dark, so the butter must be removed from heat at the right color.
Swap the capers
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, vinegar, sauce):
- Tarragonfits about as well
- Capersthe original
- Garlicfits less well
- Parsleyfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, vinegar, sauce. 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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