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Sauce

Prince of Wales's Catsup

A fermented elderberry sauce with anchovies, shallots, cloves, mace, nutmeg, and ginger, preserved in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Prince of Wales's Catsup

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the elderberry liquid

  1. Strip and fill a jar with ripe elderberries.

  2. Add enough vinegar to fill the jar.

  3. Place the jar in a cool oven and let it stand overnight.

  4. Run the liquid through a jelly bag.

Season and bottle

  1. For every pint of liquid, add 2 ounces of anchovies, 1 ounce of shallots, 1 teaspoon each of cloves, mace, nutmeg, and ginger.

  2. Boil until the anchovies dissolve.

  3. When cold, strain and bottle it.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Shallot + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 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

Ripe elderberries
Provide the main flavour and colour of the catsup base.
Vinegar
Extracts flavour from the elderberries and adds sharp acidity that helps preserve the catsup.
Anchovies
Dissolve during boiling to add deep savoury, salty richness.
Shallots
Add a mild, sharp onion-like savour to the seasoned liquid.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice flavour to the catsup.

The step that matters

Boil until the anchovies dissolve. Anchovies must break down fully so their savoury flavour blends into the liquid. Stopping early leaves whole fish pieces and an uneven, less smooth catsup.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, shallot, clove, nutmeg, 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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