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Sauce

Piquant Sauce

A tangy sauce made with brown sauce, vinegar, capers, gherkin, onion, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,381 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Piquant Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine onion and vinegar in a small saucepan.

  2. Bring to a boil and reduce significantly.

  3. Add brown sauce, capers, gherkin, salt, and pepper.

  4. Bring to a boil again.

  5. Simmer for 5 minutes.

  6. Serve.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Capers + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Sauce + caperstop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Capers + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,088 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the brown sauce.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and a mild sweetness as it softens in the reduced vinegar.
Capers
Add a salty, tangy bite that gives the sauce its piquant character.
Gherkin
Adds sharp, tangy flavour and a little texture through its chopped pieces.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil and reduce significantly. Boiling the onion and vinegar drives off water and concentrates the acid and flavour. If the vinegar is not reduced enough, the finished sauce tastes thin and its sharpness is muted once the brown sauce is added.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Mustardbetter flavor fit
  2. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  3. Horseradishbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, vinegar, capers, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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