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Sauce

Caper Sauce

A creamy sauce made with capers, butter, milk, flour, salt, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Caper Sauce

Why it works: Capers and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,024 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Caper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Drain the capers thoroughly and set aside.

  2. Melt the butter over low heat in a small saucepan.

  3. Stir in the flour until well blended, being careful not to brown it.

  4. Pour in the milk all at once.

  5. Stir constantly until the mixture boils.

  6. Continue cooking for a few moments.

  7. Mix in the salt and pepper.

Finish and serve

  1. Transfer to a double boiler and heat slowly for about an hour.

  2. Beat briskly before serving.

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 + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Capers + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Enriches the sauce and carries flavor while forming the base with flour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the sauce, which thickens as it heats.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour without browning it. Flour cooked in butter is a roux that thickens smoothly only when it stays pale; browning changes its flavor and thickening power, and a roux stirred well before the milk prevents lumps.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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