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Sauce

Cockle Ketchup

A sauce made from cockles, water, spices, and either port or sherry, served with cockles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Cockle Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Open the cockles and scald them in their own liquor.

  2. Add a little water if necessary and strain through a cloth.

  3. For brown sauce, season with savory spices, then add port, anchovies, and garlic.

  4. For white sauce, omit the port, anchovies, and garlic, and add sherry, lemon juice, lemon peel, mace, nutmeg, and white pepper.

  5. For brown sauce, burn a bit of sugar for coloring.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Garlic + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,893 recipes

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

  4. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Nutmeg + white peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cockles
Provide the main flavour and body of the sauce once scalded and strained.
Anchovies
Add a deep savoury, umami note to the brown sauce.
Port
Adds sweetness and depth to the brown sauce.
Sherry
Adds acidity and warmth to the white sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the white sauce.

The step that matters

Burning the sugar for coloring. Sugar darkens and turns bitter when it goes past caramel, so it should be browned only until dark amber. Burnt sugar that is too far gone tastes acrid and can spoil the sauce.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, garlic, sherry, lemon, mace, nutmeg, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, garlic, sherry, lemon, mace, nutmeg, sugar. 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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