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Sauce

Leamington Sauce

A sauce made from young green walnuts, vinegar, walnut juice, Indian soy, port wine, shallots, garlic, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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

Prepare the walnut juice

  1. Procure young green walnuts and pound them to a pulp.

  2. Sprinkle liberally with coarse sea salt and let them sit for 3 days, stirring frequently.

  3. Strain the juice obtained and measure it.

Make and store the sauce

  1. Add the remaining ingredients, ensuring the garlic and shallots are pounded or finely chopped.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a large jar, cover tightly, and let it sit for 3 weeks.

  3. Strain into small bottles, cork, seal securely, and store for use.

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. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Walnut + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Port wine + shallottop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together380 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Vinegar + port winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + garlictop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Green walnuts
Walnut juice supplies the dark colour and strong, pungent flavour that defines the sauce.
Vinegar
Acidity preserves the sauce and sharpens its flavour over the long steeping period.
Indian soy
Adds salty, savoury depth and umami to the sauce.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and fruity body that rounds out the sharp vinegar.
Shallots
Add a sharp, aromatic onion note that deepens during steeping.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and savoury bite to the sauce.

The step that matters

Salting and pounding the walnuts. Walnuts must be pounded fully to a pulp and salted thoroughly so the juice extracts well and the bitter, tannic flavour mellows during the three days of resting. Skipping the stirring can leave dry patches and uneven flavour.

Swap the walnut

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

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

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