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Spiced Sauce

A sauce made with cloves, anchovy paste, cayenne pepper, walnut ketchup, tomato ketchup, and white wine vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 479 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Spiced Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Combine ground cloves, anchovy paste, cayenne pepper, walnut ketchup, and tomato ketchup in a bowl.

  2. Add white wine vinegar and mix well.

  3. Transfer the mixture to an earthen jar and cover the jar.

Heat and rest

  1. Place the jar in a saucepan with water.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Let it simmer for 2 hours.

  4. Remove the jar.

  5. Let it sit for a week.

Finish and bottle

  1. Filter the sauce.

  2. Bottle it.

  3. Cork it tightly.

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. Anchovy + ketchuptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Clove + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovy paste
Adds a salty, savory depth that builds the sauce's umami backbone.
Walnut ketchup
Contributes concentrated savory, slightly bitter flavor and deep color to the sauce.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness, body and savory tomato flavor to the sauce.
White wine vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the sauce and sharpens its flavors over the long rest.
Ground cloves
Provides warm, aromatic spice flavor that deepens during steeping.

The step that matters

Simmering in the water bath. Keeping the jar at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil heats the mixture evenly and helps the spices and flavors blend without the vinegar evaporating too quickly. The later week-long rest lets the flavors meld further.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, anchovy, pepper, ketchup, tomato, white wine, vinegar):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Chickpeafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, anchovy, pepper, ketchup, tomato, white wine, 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.

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