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Sauce

Scotch Sauce

A sauce made from anchovies, vinegar, claret, horseradish, onions, parsley, peach leaves, mace, cloves, nutmeg, black pepper, and cochineal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Leslie · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Scotch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Take fifteen anchovies, chop them finely, and steep them in vinegar for a week, keeping the vessel closely covered.

  2. Put the anchovies into a pint of claret or port wine.

  3. Scrape finely a large stick of horseradish.

  4. Chop two onions, a handful of parsley, a teaspoonful of the leaves of lemon-thyme, and two large peach leaves.

  5. Add a nutmeg, six or eight blades of mace, nine cloves, and a teaspoonful of black pepper, all slightly pounded in a mortar.

Make the sauce

  1. Put all these ingredients into a silver or block tin sauce-pan, or into an earthen pipkin, and add a few grains of cochineal to colour it.

  2. Pour in a large half pint of the best vinegar, and simmer it slowly until the bones of the anchovies are entirely dissolved.

  3. Strain the liquor through a sieve.

Bottle

  1. When quite cold, put it away for use in small bottles.

  2. Dip the corks in melted rosin and secure them with pieces of leather tied closely over them.

  3. Fill each bottle quite full.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

132Calories
3 gProtein
2 gFat
28 gCarbs

Counts 7 of 9 ingredients. The other 2 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 7 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Peach1 medium (150g)59
Onion1 medium (110g)44
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Clove1 tsp ground (2g)7
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Vinegar1 tbsp (15ml) distilled3
Parsley1 tbsp chopped fresh (3.8g)1
Horseradishnot in our table0
Macenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Eliza Leslie. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Horseradish + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies (in the method)
Dissolve during simmering, adding a savoury depth to the sauce.
Vinegar
Provides sharp acidity that gives the sauce its bite and helps preserve it.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine depth to the liquid base.
Horseradish
Supplies the pungent, sharp heat characteristic of the sauce.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice notes to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly until the anchovy bones dissolve. Gentle, sustained heat is needed to soften and break down the anchovy bones fully. Rapid boiling can scorch the sauce and the vinegar can evaporate, leaving the bones intact and the flavour uneven.

Swap the peach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, horseradish, parsley, onion, mace, clove, nutmeg):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, horseradish, parsley, onion, mace, clove, nutmeg. 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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