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Worcestershire Sauce

A fermented sauce made from soy sauce, vinegar, spices, and aromatics.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and shallot 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

Prepare

  1. Grind the black pepper and mace.

  2. Pound the cloves and peel the garlic.

Make and steep the sauce

  1. Mix all ingredients together, adding salt to taste.

  2. Pour the mixture into a large jar and cover tightly.

  3. Let it stand for two weeks, stirring daily.

Finish and bottle

  1. After two weeks, boil the mixture for twenty minutes.

  2. Strain through muslin, then bottle, cork tightly, 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. Garlic + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Indian soy sauce
Provides the salty, savory base that the sauce is built on.
Vinegar
Adds acidity and sharpness, and helps preserve the sauce during its long steep.
Shallots
Contribute savory sweetness and aromatic depth as they steep in the liquid.
Cloves
Add warm, pungent aroma that infuses into the sauce over time.

The step that matters

Covering the jar tightly during the two-week steep. Vinegar and soy sauce extract flavour from spices slowly, and a tight cover keeps aromas in and the liquid from spoiling or evaporating during the long steep, so the stirring and resting can work as intended.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, pepper, clove, garlic, shallot, 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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