Skip to main content
Sauce

Caper Sauce

A buttery sauce with capers, pepper, salt, milk, and tarragon vinegar.

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

Why it works: Capers and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 379 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Caper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in an enamel bowl.

  2. Slowly add the flour, stirring to combine.

  3. Add the pepper, salt, and milk, then bring to a boil.

  4. Stir in the chopped capers and tarragon vinegar.

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 + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together379 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Provides fat and richness, and carries flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when heated in the butter and milk.
Milk
Forms the liquid base, giving the sauce its body and creamy texture.
Capers
Add a salty, sharp flavour that cuts through the richness of the sauce.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and a bright aroma that lifts the flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil after adding the flour and milk. Flour must be stirred into the melted butter so it cooks evenly without lumps. Heating the mixture to a boil lets the starch swell and thicken the sauce.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, milk, tarragon, 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.

More caper sauce recipes

Brown 12Substitute 10Mock 6Anchovy 3for Boiled Mutton 3Egg 3 See all 218 →

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipesCurry SauceCurry Sauce59 recipes