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Epicurean Sauce

A sauce made from Indian soy, chili vinegar, walnut catsup, and mushroom catsup, shaken in a bottle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and mushroom match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 763 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Epicurean Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix all ingredients in a bottle by shaking well.

  2. Serve with melted butter and fish, or add to various gravies.

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

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

  2. Vinegar + mushroomtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Vinegar + walnuttop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Indian soy
Adds salty, savory depth to the sauce.
Chili vinegar
Adds sharp acidity and heat that cut through rich foods.
Walnut catsup
Contributes concentrated savory flavor and a deep, rich color.
Mushroom catsup
Provides umami richness, the largest share of the sauce's savory body.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Soybeanfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, mushroom. 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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