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Worcester Sauce, to Make

A fermented sauce made with shallot, vinegar, anchovy, walnut ketchup, soy sauce, and cayenne pepper, steeped for two weeks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Worcester Sauce, to Make

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place minced shallot in a dry bottle.

  2. Pour in the Bordeaux vinegar.

  3. Add essence of anchovy, walnut ketchup, soy sauce, and cayenne pepper.

Steep

  1. Cork the bottle and store in a cool place.

  2. Shake well twice a day for two weeks.

Strain and bottle

  1. Strain the sauce and transfer to small bottles.

  2. Cork tightly and store 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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Anchovy + ketchuptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Bordeaux vinegar
Provides the acidic liquid base that extracts and carries the flavours of the other ingredients.
Essence of anchovy
Adds deep savoury, umami flavour to the sauce.
Walnut ketchup
Contributes dark, rich savoury depth and a fermented-style complexity.
Soy sauce
Adds salty, savoury umami depth that rounds out the sauce.
Shallot
Adds a mild allium aroma and sharpness that infuses into the vinegar during steeping.

The step that matters

Shaking twice a day during steeping. Regular shaking keeps the solids in contact with the liquid so flavour extracts evenly over the two weeks. Without it, the infusion becomes uneven and the flavour weaker and patchy.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Chestnutfits about as well
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Sesamefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, shallot, vinegar, anchovy, ketchup, sauce, pepper. 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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