Skip to main content
Sauce

Worcester Sauce

A fermented sauce made with cayenne pepper, vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, shallots, and anchovies, aged for ten days.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Garlic and shallot 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 ↓

Worcester Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mix all ingredients well in a bowl.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

Age and bottle

  1. Cork the mixture and let it sit for 10 days.

  2. After 10 days, bottle the sauce for use.

  3. Strain if desired, or leave as is.

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. Garlic + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the sauce.
Anchovies
Add salty, savoury depth that rounds out the sauce.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat and sharpness to the sauce.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and flavour.
Shallots
Add a milder onion-like aroma and sweetness.
Soy sauce
Adds salt and savoury, umami flavour.

The step that matters

Letting the sauce sit for 10 days. During the rest, the acid and the solids slowly extract and blend flavours, so the sauce tastes mellow and integrated. Bottling early leaves the flavours sharp and raw.

Swap the clove

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

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

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

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes