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Sauce

Worchester Sauce

A fermented sauce made from tomatoes, onions, peppers, garlic, celery, spices, sugar, mustard, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Worchester Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil tomatoes, onions, red peppers, garlic, celery, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, and salt together until soft.

  2. Put the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Add brown sugar, mustard, and vinegar.

  4. Cook for 30 minutes.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, moisture and tangy base of the sauce.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and depth, balancing the acidity of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Brings sharp acidity that gives the sauce its tang and helps preserve it.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that rounds out the sauce's savoury profile.
Onions
Contribute savoury depth and body as they soften during boiling.

The step that matters

Put the mixture through a sieve. Straining removes the softened solids, including skins and seeds, so the sauce becomes smooth and pourable rather than chunky.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, garlic, clove, celery, allspice, cinnamon):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Eggplantfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, garlic, clove, celery, allspice, cinnamon. 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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