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Sauce

Reading Sauce

A vinegar-based sauce made with nasturtium flowers, shallots, salt, cayenne pepper, and treacle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and shallot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,898 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Reading Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Gather and dry the nasturtium flowers, then press them into a pint jar.

  2. Add salt, cayenne pepper, and chopped shallots to the jar.

Steep and finish

  1. Pour in 1 quart of boiling vinegar and seal the jar while hot.

  2. Let it sit for six weeks.

  3. After six weeks, sweeten with treacle and bottle for use.

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 + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 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

Nasturtium flowers
Provide the main flavour and peppery aroma that the vinegar draws out.
Shallots
Add a mild savoury onion note that mellows during the long steep.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat that infuses into the vinegar over the steeping period.
Vinegar
Acts as the solvent and preserving liquid, extracting flavour from the flowers and shallots.
Treacle
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavour to balance the sharp vinegar.

The step that matters

Sealing the jar with boiling vinegar. Pouring boiling vinegar over the flowers and seasonings and sealing while hot helps extract flavour and keeps the contents from spoiling during the long steep. Hot liquid also drives air out of the jar, so the seal should be tight.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Cabbagefits better
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, 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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