Flavorings

Rose water

Distilled petals for baklava, sheer khurma, and a Moroccan milk pudding.

Sake

Rice wine for the cup and the pot — a splash to steam, deglaze, or drink while the fish cooks.

Sherry vinegar

Jerez in a cruet — the Spanish splash that finishes a gazpacho or a pot of lentils.

Shrimp paste

Belacan, terasi, kapi — the funk that makes a curry taste like the sea and a village.

Soy sauce

The brown salt of East and Southeast Asian pots: not 'Asian seasoning,' but a specific fermentation the books name thirty-one times.

Tahini

Sesame turned into a sauce: hummus, a dressing, a drizzle, and the jar the books open in twenty kitchens.

Tomato paste

The spoon of cooked tomato that turns a thin pot into a sauce — 28 kitchens in the series keep a tin.

Tomato sauce

Cooked tomato, already a sauce, when the recipe does not want you to start from fruit.

Vinegar

The unnamed sour the books reach for when lemon is not on the board.

Wasabi

The green rhizome grated at the last second — not the dyed horseradish in a tube, if you can help it.

White vinegar

Sharp, cheap, and honest — the pickle and salsa vinegar.

White wine vinegar

A cleaner sour for a pickle or a beurre blanc.

Worcestershire sauce

Anchovy, tamarind, and vinegar in a bottle the weeknight steak still wants.