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Sauce

Brown Caper Sauce

A sauce made with veal or beef gravy, capers, pickle liquor or chili vinegar, cayenne pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,088 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Brown Caper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Thicken the veal or beef gravy as directed for Sauce Tournée.

  2. Add the capers and pickle liquor or chili vinegar to the gravy.

  3. Season with cayenne pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

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. Capers + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Capers + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,453 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Veal + caperstop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together198 recipes

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

  5. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal or beef gravy
Forms the savoury base of the sauce and carries the other flavours.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny bite that cuts through the richness of the gravy.
Pickle liquor or chili vinegar
Adds acidity, brightening the sauce and balancing its savoury depth.

The step that matters

Season with cayenne pepper and coarse sea salt to taste. Acidity and salt both change how savoury and sharp a sauce tastes, and heat from cayenne builds gradually, so seasoning in small amounts and tasting as you go prevents an overly salty, sour, or fiery result.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, vinegar, pepper. 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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