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Sauce

Reading Sauce

A fermented sauce made from pickled walnut liquor, soy sauce, shallots, ginger, mustard seed, anchovy, cayenne pepper, and bay leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 859 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Reading Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the flavourings

  1. Bruise the shallots and boil them with the walnut liquor for 15 minutes.

  2. Bruise the other ingredients (except the bay leaves) and combine them in another pan.

  3. Boil the mixture for about 1 hour.

  4. Mix in the boiled walnut juice, stirring well.

  5. Simmer everything together for 15 minutes.

Steep and strain

  1. Transfer the mixture to a jar and cover.

  2. Let the sauce stand for 24 hours.

  3. Add the bay leaves.

  4. Close the jar.

  5. Let it sit for a week.

  6. Strain the sauce through flannel.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the strained sauce.

  2. Cork the bottle well.

  3. Wax over the corks.

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. Shallot + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Shallot + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Walnut + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 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

Pickled walnut liquor
Provides the main savoury, tangy base flavour of the sauce.
Soy sauce
Adds salty, savoury depth and umami to the liquid.
Shallot
Contributes mild sweetness and aromatic onion-like flavour when boiled.
Anchovy
Adds deep savoury umami that rounds out the sauce without tasting fishy.
Mustard seed
Adds sharp pungency and a subtle bite to the sauce.

The step that matters

Letting the sauce sit for a week. Flavours from the boiled ingredients need time to infuse and mellow into the liquid. Bottling or straining too early leaves the sauce harsh and less rounded.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, sauce, shallot, mustard, anchovy, pepper):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, sauce, shallot, mustard, anchovy, 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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