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Sauce

Chow Chow Spice

A fermented spice sauce made with vinegar, catsup, spices, gelatin, and port wine, aged for months.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Chow Chow Spice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spices

  1. Mix together the ground mace, nutmeg, coriander seed, cloves, allspice, and sweet fennel seed.

  2. In a large container, combine the vinegar, walnut catsup, ground cloves, ground cinnamon, ground celery seed, and ground cayenne peppers.

  3. Grind the mixture very fine.

Make the sauce

  1. Soak the gelatin in 2 gallons of cold vinegar for about 3 days until soft.

  2. Heat the softened gelatin until thin, but do not boil.

  3. Add the gelatin to the spice mixture in a kettle.

  4. Chop the garlic finely, tie it in a bag, and add it to the sauce.

  5. Cook the mixture together for 45 minutes.

Age and bottle

  1. After cooking, transfer the sauce to a cask and let it cool.

  2. Once cooled, stir in the port wine.

  3. Let the sauce age for at least 27 months before bottling, stirring well before bottling.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Coriander + fenneltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together426 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Nutmeg + fenneltop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together96 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatin
Softened and melted into the sauce to thicken it and give it body.
Walnut catsup
Adds deep, savory richness and a dark color to the sauce.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma and sharp flavor that mellows during aging.
Port wine
Adds sweetness, fruity depth, and aroma to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Heating the softened gelatin. Gelatin must be heated only until it thins; boiling can weaken its setting power and make the sauce's body unreliable.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (nutmeg, coriander, clove, allspice, fennel, vinegar, walnut):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nutmeg, coriander, clove, allspice, fennel, vinegar, walnut. 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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