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Worcestershire Sauce

A fermented sauce made from mace, cayenne pods, malt vinegar, shallots, garlic, and Indian soy, steeped for 14 days.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,000 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Worcestershire Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the infusion

  1. Boil mace, cayenne pods, and malt vinegar for 15 minutes.

  2. Put the mixture in a jar. Add sliced shallots and garlic.

  3. Let it stand for 14 days.

Finish and bottle

  1. Strain the mixture and add Indian soy.

  2. Bottle and seal.

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. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Vinegar + garlictop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Vinegar + shallottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Malt + vinegartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together365 recipes

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

  5. Malt + shallottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Malt vinegar
Acts as the main liquid that extracts flavour from the spices and aromatics, and gives acidity.
Shallots
Add savoury sweetness and aroma as they steep in the vinegar.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows and deepens during the long steep.
Indian soy
Adds salty, savoury umami depth to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Letting it stand for 14 days. The flavours are drawn out slowly over time, so cutting the steep short leaves the sauce thin and harsh. Keeping the jar sealed and undisturbed during this period lets the vinegar extract the spices and aromatics evenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (malt, vinegar, shallot, garlic):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against malt, vinegar, shallot, garlic. 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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