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Sauce

Sauce Aristocratique.

A preserved sauce made from green walnuts, anchovies, spices, shallots, vinegar, port, and soy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sauce Aristocratique.

Ingredients

Directions

Make the walnut juice

  1. Pound the green walnuts in a mortar and squeeze out the juice through a strainer. Let the juice stand to settle.

  2. Pour off the clear juice and add anchovies, spices, and cloves in the specified proportions.

Boil and flavour

  1. Boil until the anchovies dissolve, then strain the juice again.

  2. Add the shallots and boil again.

  3. To the boiled liquor, add vinegar, port, and soy in the specified quantities, then bottle for use.

Bottle

  1. Cork well and seal the corks.

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 + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Walnut + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Ginger + shallottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Green walnuts
Their pressed juice forms the liquid base of the sauce.
Anchovies
Dissolve into the boiled liquor to add deep savoury umami flavour.
Shallots
Add aromatic sweetness and mild pungency to the boiled liquor.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the sauce.
Port
Adds sweetness, body and fruity depth to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Boil until the anchovies dissolve, then strain. Boiling fully dissolves the anchovies into the liquid so the sauce is smooth and evenly seasoned. Stopping early leaves solids and uneven salty flavour, and straining removes the remaining particles.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, clove, ginger, shallot, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, clove, ginger, shallot, 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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