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Sauce

London Club Sauce

A vinegar-based sauce with pepper, mustard, cloves, salt, and burnt sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

London Club Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine all ingredients in a stone jar.

  2. Seal the jar and let it steep for two weeks.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides the acidity that carries the sauce's sharp flavour and helps preserve it during steeping.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, pungent heat that infuses into the vinegar during steeping.
Cayenne pepper
Contributes concentrated capsaicin heat that builds gradually as the sauce steeps.
Mustard
Adds pungency and sharpness, and its compounds contribute to the sauce's bite.
Burnt sugar
Adds a dark, caramel-like bitterness and colour that rounds the sharp vinegar.

The step that matters

Sealing the jar for the full steep. The sauce relies on the vinegar slowly extracting flavour from the spices over two weeks. Sealing keeps aromas in and contamination out, while a shortened steep leaves the flavours thin and unbalanced.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, pepper, mustard, sugar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, mustard, sugar. 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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