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Sauce

A Nice Sauce to Eat with Cold Meats

A sauce made from ale, vinegar, treacle, anchovies, shallots, garlic, basil, cloves, mace, peppers, and ginger, boiled and left to sit overnight.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

A Nice Sauce to Eat with Cold Meats

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the ale, vinegar, treacle, anchovies, shallots, garlic, basil, cloves, mace, long peppers, black peppers, and ginger in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and let it sit overnight.

Bottle

  1. When bottling, do not include the bottoms or spices.

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. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Garlic + basiltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,805 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Basil + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Basil + clovetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Dissolve into the liquid to add deep savoury, umami flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the sauce.
Treacle
Adds sweetness and dark colour to balance the sharp vinegar.
Shallots
Contribute mild onion-like sweetness and aroma as they soften in the boil.

The step that matters

Letting it sit overnight. Resting lets the boiled flavours from the aromatics and spices steep into the liquid and mellow together. Cutting the rest short leaves the sauce sharp and less rounded.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, shallot, garlic, basil, clove, pepper, ginger. 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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