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Sauce

Imitation Worcestershire Sauce

A fermented sauce made from red pepper, catsup, shallots, anchovies, vinegar, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Imitation Worcestershire Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine all ingredients in a stone jar.

  2. Place the jar in a water bath and heat gradually until it's too hot to touch.

Rest and bottle

  1. Let the mixture stand for two days.

  2. Strain the mixture 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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Walnut + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

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 savory umami flavor.
Shallots
Add sharp aromatic sweetness that softens during gentle heating and resting.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that extracts and preserves flavors from the other ingredients.
Walnut or tomato catsup
Adds sweetness, body and tangy fruit flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Gradual heating in the water bath. Heating slowly and not letting the jar boil keeps the vinegar from evaporating too fast and prevents harsh, cooked flavors from developing in the aromatics. Gentle heat also helps the flavors begin to blend before the two-day rest.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Black-eyed peafits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

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