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Cherokee, or Store Sauce
INGREDIENTS.- oz. of cayenne pepper, 5 cloves of garlic, 2 tablespoonfuls of soy, 1 tablespoonful of walnut ketchup, 1 pint of vinegar.
Boil all the ingredients gently for about 1/2 hour; strain the liquor, and bottle off for use.
TIME. hour.
SEASONABLE. - This sauce can be made at any time.
CHERRIES, DRIED.
A Victorian "store sauce" — a thin, fiery vinegar condiment boiled up in quantity and bottled to keep on the shelf. It is closer to a hot sauce than to a gravy, and a spoonful is a serving.
- The cayenne quantity is incompleteThe ingredient list gives only "oz. of cayenne pepper" with the fraction lost, so the amount cannot be recovered from this text. Whatever the original figure, this is a ferociously hot sauce for a single pint; start low rather than guess upward.
- Walnut ketchupNot a nut butter but the spiced, salted liquor drawn from green walnuts — dark, thin and savoury. Still sold by British specialist grocers; mushroom ketchup is the usual stand-in, though it is milder and less tannic.
- Soy"Soy" here means plain soy sauce, the imported dark kind sold by Victorian grocers. Use a naturally brewed dark soy or a Chinese light soy; nothing sweetened.
- VinegarA pint is 20 fl oz in Beeton's British measure, about 2 1/2 cups. Malt vinegar is the period choice and gives the right rounded sharpness; distilled white vinegar will taste thin.
- Boiling and strainingThirty minutes at a bare simmer, not a rolling boil, or you drive off vinegar and concentrate the cayenne unpredictably. Strain through muslin rather than a mesh sieve — the cayenne solids will otherwise settle as sludge in the bottle.
- BottlingFill scalded bottles while the liquor is hot and cap tightly. The sauce is strongly acidic and salty and keeps for months in a cool dark cupboard, but shake before pouring; separation is normal.
- Yield and useRather under a pint after straining, enough to fill two small sauce bottles. Treat it as a table condiment for chops, cold meat, fish and soups — a few drops at a time.
- VentilationCayenne simmering in vinegar throws off an irritating vapour. Open a window and keep your face out of the steam when you lift the lid.
Bottled "store sauces" were a fixture of the nineteenth-century English kitchen: sharp, salty, long-keeping liquids made in batches and set by in the store cupboard to be shaken over anything plain. They stood in the same tradition that produced Worcestershire and the various walnut, mushroom and anchovy ketchups, which are generally traced back to earlier attempts to imitate imported Asian fish and soy sauces. The name "Cherokee" appears to have nothing to do with Cherokee cooking, though the reason for it is not recorded here. What the recipe really records is the period's reliance on cayenne, garlic and imported soy to lift a diet of boiled and roasted meat.