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Sauce

A Useful Sauce for Cold Meat, Etc.

A sauce made from anchovies, chilis, shallots or garlic, mushroom ketchup, walnut ketchup, and cayenne, used for cold meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and shallot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,982 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

A Useful Sauce for Cold Meat, Etc.

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pound the anchovies, chilis, shallots, and garlic together.

  2. Mix in the mushroom ketchup and walnut ketchup.

  3. Bottle the sauce and seal it tightly.

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. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Walnut + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Mushroom + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Ketchup + shallottop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together476 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Mushroom + ketchuptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Dissolve into the sauce to add a deep, savory, salty backbone.
Mushroom ketchup
Supplies concentrated savory umami flavour as the sauce's main liquid.
Walnut ketchup
Adds a rich, earthy, slightly bitter depth alongside the mushroom ketchup.
Fresh green chilis
Provide heat and a bright, fresh pungency to the sauce.
Shallots or garlic
Contribute sharp aromatic pungency that mellows as the sauce sits.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, ketchup, shallot):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, ketchup, shallot. 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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