By Joel Denker
As I embarked on this project, my wife, Peggy, mentioned that capers, the subject of my quest, were central to tartar sauce. She was right. To my surprise, I learned that capers are a common ingredient in recipes for the dish. I realized what an asset capers were to tartar sauce. Gastronomer Nigel Slater explains their contribution: “In one knife-sharp hit, this sauce of mayonnaise, gherkins, mustard and capers continually sharpens an appetite that would be soon be dulled after mouthful after mouthful of crumbed or battered food.” Capers add zip to this basic accompaniment to fish, just as they spark the smoked salmon and herring of Scandinavia.
Most cultures, even ones without a reputation for spices, seem to desire some sort of verve in their food. The English, for example, were avid for capers. In the eighteenth century, they developed a creamy caper sauce to go with lamb or mutton. During Tudor and Stuart times, merchants imported barrels of capers. When capers were unavailable, cooks replaced them with buds of nasturtium or of the broome shrub. Desperate for capers, some turned to a recipe for Mary Eaton’s The Cook and Housekeeper’s Complete and Universal Dictionary (1822): “An excellent substitute for capers may be made of pickled green peas, nasturtions, or gherkins, chopped in similar size, and boiled with melted butter.’
The source of these tangy pleasures is a spiny shrub that originated in the arid terrain of Central Asia and is now especially prevalent in the Mediterranean. The caper is the green closed bud of this plant. The bush grows well in harsh soil and in hot, dry climates. They often grow wild along the Mediterranean coast, thriving on the salty air. The sprawling shrub sinks its roots deep in cracks in the ground and in rocky crevices. It clutches old walls and clings to ruins. Caper bushes were found growing in the Roman coliseum and springing up along the Jerusalem western wall.
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To learn more about capers, see The Carrot Purple and Other Curious Stories of the Food We Eat, coming in October from Rowman & Littlefield: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442248861/The-Carrot-Purple-and-Other-Curious-Stories-of-the-Food-We-Eat.
