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Sauce

Sauce for Hashes

A savory sauce made with anchovies, vinegar, mace, bay leaf, cloves, onion, peppercorns, savory herbs, horseradish, and claret.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Sauce for Hashes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine all ingredients in a saucepan.

  2. Simmer gently until the anchovies dissolve.

  3. Add claret and simmer for 10 more minutes.

  4. Strain the sauce and bottle it 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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Clove + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Dissolve into the liquid to add a deep, savory backbone of flavor.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sauce and balances its richness.
Onion
Contributes aromatic sweetness and body as it softens in the simmering liquid.
Claret
Adds wine flavor and acidity, rounding out the sauce during the final simmer.
Horseradish
Provides a sharp, pungent heat that gives the sauce its bite.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the anchovies dissolve. Boiling vigorously can make the sauce bitter and cloud it, while gentle heat lets the anchovies break down slowly and blend smoothly into the liquid.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, clove, onion, horseradish. 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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