Name: Epicurean Sauce
Ingredients: ½ cup Indian soy; ½ cup Chili vinegar; ½ cup walnut catsup; 1½ cups mushroom catsup; Optional: 1 cup port wine, a few shallots, thin strips of lemon rind

Why it works: Mushroom and shallot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,982 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Epicurean Sauce

Ingredients

½ cup Indian soy
½ cup Chili vinegar
½ cup walnut catsup
1½ cups mushroom catsup
Optional: 1 cup port wine, a few shallots, thin strips of lemon rind

Directions

Make the sauce

In a bottle, mix the Indian soy, chili vinegar, walnut catsup, and mushroom catsup by shaking well.
Add port wine, shallots, and lemon rind to the mixture if desired.

Serve

Serve with fish or mix with gravies as preferred.

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.

Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,982 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,523 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Walnut + shallottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together440 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Port wine + shallottop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together380 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,149 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

Indian soy: Provides salty, savoury depth that forms the base flavour of the sauce.
Chili vinegar: Adds sharp acidity and heat that brightens the sauce and balances the richer catsups.
Walnut catsup: Contributes a deep, mellow savoury flavour typical of walnut-based catsups.
Mushroom catsup: Adds earthy umami richness that gives the sauce its main savoury body.

“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.