Name: Leamington Sauce
Ingredients: 1 quart walnut juice; 2 quarts vinegar; 1 pint Indian soy sauce; 1 ounce cayenne pepper; 2 ounces shallots; ½ ounce garlic; ½ pint port wine

Why it works: Shallot and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,000 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Leamington Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Combine walnut juice and vinegar in a large bowl.
Add Indian soy sauce, cayenne pepper, shallots, garlic, and port wine, then mix well until all ingredients are thoroughly combined.
Store in a sealed container and use to flavor gravies, hashes, and soups.

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.

Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,000 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Walnut + shallottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together440 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,090 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Shallot + port winetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together380 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Vinegar + port winetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together598 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnut juice: Provides the base flavor and deep color of the sauce.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps preserve the sauce.
Indian soy sauce: Adds salty, savory depth through fermented umami flavor.
Cayenne pepper: Adds heat that gives the sauce its sharp, pungent bite.
Shallots: Contribute mild onion-like sweetness and aromatic flavor.
Port wine: Adds sweetness and fruity, rounded flavor to balance the acidity.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, sauce, pepper, shallot, garlic, port wine):

Chestnutfits better
Beansfits better
Black-eyed peafits about as well
Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sauce, pepper, shallot, garlic, port wine. 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.