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Home-made Worcestershire Sauce

A fermented sauce made from anchovies, garlic, spices, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Home-made Worcestershire Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Combine and steep

  1. Combine the mashed anchovies, chopped garlic, allspice, mace, cayenne pepper, ground cloves, cinnamon, and ginger in a bowl.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 24 hours.

Strain and add lemon

  1. Strain the mixture.

  2. Add the juice of one lemon.

Age and bottle

  1. Cork the mixture and set aside for 10 days.

  2. Pour into a crock.

  3. Skim off any residue.

  4. Bottle and seal.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

Anchovies
Adds deep savoury, umami flavour that gives the sauce its backbone.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma and savoury depth.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and helps balance the rich spices.
Cayenne pepper
Provides the sharp heat that stands out in the sauce.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic sweetness that rounds out the spice blend.
Ground cloves
Adds strong aromatic warmth in small amounts.

The step that matters

Set aside for 10 days. Resting lets the anchovy, garlic and spice flavours slowly blend and mellow into the liquid. Rushing this stage leaves the sauce sharp and disjointed.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (garlic, allspice, pepper, clove, cinnamon, ginger, lemon):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against garlic, allspice, pepper, clove, cinnamon, ginger, lemon. 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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