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Sauce

Spiced Sauce

A fermented spiced sauce made with anchovy paste, walnut ketchup, tomato ketchup, cloves, cayenne pepper, and white wine vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 479 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Spiced Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the sauce

  1. Combine the ground cloves, anchovy paste, cayenne pepper, walnut ketchup and tomato ketchup in a bowl, then add the white wine vinegar and mix well.

Cook and age

  1. Transfer the mixture to an earthen jar and cover it.

  2. Place the jar in a saucepan with water and bring to a boil.

  3. Let it simmer for two hours.

  4. Remove the jar and let the sauce sit for a week.

Strain and bottle

  1. Filter the sauce.

  2. Bottle the sauce and cork 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. Anchovy + ketchuptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Clove + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the sauce.
Anchovy paste
Adds savoury depth and salty umami richness.
Cayenne pepper
Adds sharp heat that gives the sauce its bite.
Walnut ketchup
Contributes deep, mellow body and a nutty, savoury flavour.
Tomato ketchup
Adds body, sweetness and tomato flavour to the sauce.
White wine vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens flavour and helps keep the sauce stable.

The step that matters

Let it sit for a week. The vinegar slowly draws flavour from the spices and ketchups, and the flavours blend and mellow over time. Rushing this rest leaves the sauce harsh and unbalanced.

Swap the walnut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, anchovy, pepper, ketchup, tomato, white wine, 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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