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Sauce

Piquant Sauce, for Storing

A preserved spicy sauce made from walnuts, mushrooms, spices, vinegar, wine, and soy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 7,874 recipes mention both. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Piquant Sauce, for Storing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnuts and mushrooms

  1. Bruise the walnuts and mushrooms separately in pans, sprinkling a little salt while bruising.

  2. Let them sit for a week, turning and bruising frequently.

  3. Press them well and drain off the liquid.

  4. Boil the liquid until the scum ceases to rise.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix equal parts of the boiled liquid and vinegar.

  2. Add mace, allspice, cloves, ginger, cayenne, mustard seed, garlic, and shallots.

  3. Boil and skim the sauce for 20 minutes.

  4. Strain the sauce when cold and mix in port, claret, and soy sauce.

Bottle and store

  1. Pour into small bottles, cork, seal, and store in a cool, dry place.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts
Their juice and natural compounds give the sauce its dark colour and deep, bitter-savoury flavour.
Mushrooms
Release liquid and savoury, umami flavour that forms the base of the sauce.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the walnuts and mushrooms and helps preserve the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps keep the sauce stable.
Port wine
Adds sweetness, body and fruity depth to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the liquid until the scum ceases to rise. Boiling coagulates proteins and impurities so they float to the surface where they can be skimmed off. Removing them keeps the sauce clear and stops it spoiling sooner.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, mushroom, vinegar, allspice, clove, ginger, pepper):

  1. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  2. Thymebetter flavor fit
  3. Nutmegbetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, mushroom, vinegar, allspice, clove, ginger, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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