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Worcestershire Sauce

A sauce made by cooking tomatoes, lemons, vinegar, salt, sugar, allspice, and cloves, then straining and sealing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Worcestershire Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook and strain

  1. Cook all ingredients together.

  2. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

Finish and seal

  1. Add the juice of one lemon.

  2. Cork tightly while hot 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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

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

  3. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Forms the bulk of the sauce and gives it body and a savoury base.
Lemons
Adds acidity and brightness that balances the sweetness and spice.
Cider vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that gives the sauce its tang.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and depth that rounds out the sharpness.
Ground allspice
Contributes warm, aromatic spice notes to the sauce.
Ground cloves
Contributes strong, warm aroma that deepens the sauce's flavour.

The step that matters

Cork tightly while hot and seal. Hot sauce driving out air as it cools helps create a tight seal. Any gap lets air in, which can allow spoilage to start.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, cider, vinegar, sugar, allspice, clove):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, cider, vinegar, sugar, allspice, clove. 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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