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Sauce

A Sauce

A vinegar-based sauce with shallots or garlic, cayenne pepper, soy sauce or mushroom ketchup, and walnut pickle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,292 recipes mention both. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: tree nuts, soy (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

  1. Mix together the vinegar, shallots or garlic, cayenne pepper, Indian soy sauce or mushroom ketchup, and walnut pickle.

  2. Let the mixture stand for a week, shaking it daily.

  3. Strain the mixture and bottle it 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Shallot + saucetop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Shallot + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together435 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Vinegar + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together2,282 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together27,805 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + walnuttop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,035 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides the acidic base that carries the flavours and helps preserve the sauce.
Shallots or garlic
Adds savoury, aromatic flavour that infuses into the vinegar during standing.
Indian soy sauce or mushroom ketchup
Adds salty, savoury depth and umami to the sauce.
Walnut pickle
Contributes the characteristic dark, rich, tangy flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand for a week, shaking it daily. Standing in acid lets the flavours from the shallots or garlic and the other ingredients slowly extract and blend into the vinegar. Daily shaking keeps the solids evenly distributed so the infusion is uniform.

Flavor stand-ins for the walnut

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

  1. Sesamebetter flavor fit
  2. Beansbetter flavor fit
  3. Black-eyed peabetter flavor fit
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, shallot, pepper, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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