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Sauce

Worcestershire Catsup

A fermented sauce made from mustard, cloves, bruised garlic, mace, anchovies, vinegar, and catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,053 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Worcestershire Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix all ingredients except the catsup and mustard in a bowl.

  2. Cover and let stand for 18 hours.

Strain and season

  1. Sift the mixture and add the catsup and mustard.

Store and bottle

  1. Store in a stone jug for 2 weeks, then bottle 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. Mustard + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Adds a deep, savory background flavor that rounds out the sauce.
Vinegar
Provides sharp acidity and extracts flavor from the spices and aromatics.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma and sharpness that mellows during storage.
Cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice that infuses into the vinegar over time.
Mace
Contributes a delicate, warm aroma that complements the cloves.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent heat to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Cover and let stand for 18 hours. During this long steep, vinegar slowly draws flavor out of the cloves, mace, garlic and anchovies. Covering keeps aromas in and prevents evaporation, so the flavors develop fully rather than tasting raw or weak.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, clove, garlic, 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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