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Sauce

Chetna Sauce

A sauce made from eschalots, vinegar, walnut ketchup, mushroom ketchup, soy sauce, cayenne pepper, black pepper, and chili vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Chetna Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pour heated vinegar over the eschalots and let it stand for 12 hours.

  2. Strain the mixture and add walnut ketchup, mushroom ketchup, soy sauce, cayenne pepper, black pepper, and chili vinegar.

  3. Boil for 5 minutes, 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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Walnut + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

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

  4. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Eschalots
Steeping in hot vinegar softens them and draws out their pungent, savory flavor into the liquid.
Walnut ketchup
Adds deep, savory umami flavor that gives the sauce body.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savory umami depth and a rich, meaty background flavor.
Soy sauce
Contributes salty, fermented umami flavor that rounds out the sauce.
Chili vinegar
Adds acidity and heat that brighten and sharpen the overall sauce.

The step that matters

Steeping the eschalots in heated vinegar. Steeping for the full 12 hours lets the vinegar extract the eschalots' flavor. Straining off the solids before adding the other ingredients keeps the sauce smooth and clear.

Swap the walnut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, ketchup, mushroom, 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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