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Sauce, Store, for Cold Meat or Fish
Slice two cloves of garlic, put them into a quart wine-bottle, and pour over them two table-spoonfuls of mushroom ketchup, the same of walnut ketchup, with a table-spoonful of soy, and half a pint of chilli vinegar. Put the bottle on one side, and let it remain for six days, shaking it frequently during the time. On the seventh day fill up the bottle with good ordinary vinegar, and in ten days strain it off. Put the sauce into small bottles, cork these closely, and store for use.
A Victorian store sauce: a cold-infused, vinegar-based seasoning kept in small bottles and used by the spoonful, closer to Worcestershire sauce than to anything poured over a plate. Nothing is cooked, so the quality of the four flavouring liquids is the whole recipe.
- Yield and vesselAn imperial quart bottle is 40 fl oz, about 1.1 litres; a US quart bottle will leave you short by a fifth. You start with roughly 12 fl oz of flavouring liquid and top up with plain vinegar, finishing with about a litre of sauce — enough to fill four or five small bottles.
- Measure the liquids firstHalf a pint of chilli vinegar is 10 fl oz imperial (a US half-pint is 8). The ketchups and soy together add only about five tablespoons, so the chilli vinegar carries most of the heat and character of the first infusion.
- Walnut ketchupA thin, dark, salty liquid made from green walnuts pickled in brine and spiced vinegar — not a tomato product. It is still sold by British specialist grocers; if you cannot find it, the sauce will be flatter and less earthy, and there is no clean substitute.
- Mushroom ketchupAlso a thin brown liquid, salted mushroom liquor reduced with spice. Widely available in Britain, harder to find elsewhere. Do not read either "ketchup" as a thick condiment.
- SoyIn this period, soy means naturally brewed soy sauce, generally darker and saltier than a modern light Japanese shoyu. A dark Chinese soy or a tamari sits closest to what was intended.
- Chilli vinegarVinegar steeped with dried red chillies, not a sweetened hot sauce. It is easily made by covering a handful of dried chillies with cider or white wine vinegar for a fortnight; heat varies enormously with the chilli, so taste before committing 10 fl oz of it.
- The garlic and the timingSliced raw garlic in a bottle of vinegar is safe because the medium is strongly acidic throughout — the danger with garlic is oil, not vinegar. The six days of shaking extract it; the ten days after topping up are for the flavours to marry. Straining removes the garlic entirely, so the sauce stays clear and keeps.
- "Good ordinary vinegar"Most likely a plain malt vinegar; choose one of ordinary strength (around 5 per cent acidity). Avoid anything sweet or low-acid such as balsamic; the acid is doing the preserving.
- Storing and usingStrain through a coffee filter or muslin, bottle into sterilised small bottles, cork or cap tightly and keep in a cool dark cupboard. It will hold for a year or more. Use it a teaspoon at a time on cold beef, in gravies, or shaken into a dressing — it is intensely salty and hot.
Store sauces were the Victorian answer to a spice cupboard: highly concentrated bottled seasonings that a cook made in quantity when ingredients were about, then reached for all year to lift cold meat, made-up dishes and leftovers. This one is built entirely from other bottled sauces, which tells you how thoroughly the commercial condiment trade had established itself by the time Cassell's was compiled — mushroom and walnut ketchups had been household staples since the eighteenth century, and imported soy, generally traced to the East India trade, had been sold in England for well over a hundred years. Recipes of this shape stand behind the proprietary bottled sauces that came to dominate the Victorian table, and the family resemblance to Worcestershire sauce, with its soy, vinegar and long steeping, is not accidental. The final instruction to divide the sauce into small bottles is practical rather than decorative: a large bottle repeatedly opened loses its aromatics, while a small one is finished before it fades.