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Sauce

Reading Sauce

A sauce made from walnut pickle, water, soy sauce, shallots, ginger, capsicums, mustard seed, cayenne pepper, bay leaves, and anchovy essence, simmered and steeped.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 859 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Reading Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and finely chop the shallots.

Make the sauce

  1. Place the shallots in a fireproof jar with the strained walnut pickle and simmer until reduced.

  2. In another fireproof jar, combine the water, soy sauce, ginger, capsicums, mustard seed, cayenne, and essence of anchovy.

  3. Bring to a boil, then simmer gently for about 1 hour.

  4. Mix the contents of both jars and continue slow cooking for about 3 hours.

Mature and bottle

  1. Cover the jar and let it sit in a cool place until the next day.

  2. Add the bay leaves, replace the cover, and let it sit undisturbed for 7 days.

  3. After 7 days, strain the liquid into small bottles and store 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Shallot + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Capsicum + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,571 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Walnut + capsicumtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,113 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

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

What each ingredient does

Walnut pickle
Forms the dark, tangy, savoury base of the sauce.
Soy sauce
Adds salt and savoury depth that rounds out the sharp flavours.
Shallots
Add aromatic, mildly sweet onion flavour as they reduce.
Ginger
Adds warm, aromatic bite to the sauce.
Cayenne pepper
Supplies the sharp heat of the sauce.
Mustard seed
Contributes sharp, pungent flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Keep the long cooking at a gentle simmer. A hard boil during the slow cooking can scorch the mixture and drive off too much liquid too fast. A gentle simmer lets the flavours concentrate evenly without burning.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, sauce, shallot, capsicum, mustard, pepper, anchovy):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, sauce, shallot, capsicum, mustard, pepper, anchovy. 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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