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Sauce

Brown Caper Sauce

A brown sauce flavored with vinegar, anchovy essence, capers, onion, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and anchovy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Brown Caper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the Espagnole sauce, vinegar, anchovy essence, and finely chopped onion in a saucepan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the strained sauce to the saucepan and heat until hot.

  2. Add cayenne pepper, lemon juice, and capers, stirring to combine.

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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Capers + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Anchovy + caperstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together473 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Espagnole sauce
Provides the rich brown sauce base that the other ingredients are added to.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny bite that cuts through the richness of the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.
Anchovy essence
Adds a savory, salty depth that rounds out the flavor of the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the lemon juice and capers off the heat. Lemon juice is acidic and volatile flavors fade with prolonged heating, so stirring it in after the sauce is hot, rather than boiling it, keeps its brightness. Capers also lose their sharp character and texture if overcooked.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, vinegar, anchovy, capers, pepper, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, vinegar, anchovy, capers, pepper, lemon. 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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