Sauce

As a traditional spice in China, sauce is thick paste of fomented and fermented flour or soya beans added with salt and water.

Sauce made of fermented beans was highly regarded in ancient China as a superior food and a must in treating honored guests. Sauces were matched with meat of different kind, and experienced guests would know what kind of relish they would have from the sauce served. Later, sauce became an important spice, based on which there appeared a series of sauces including soy sauce, bean sauce and lobster sauce. The earliest soy sauce was brewed from animal proteins such as beef, mutton, venison, fish or shrimps, while later vegetable proteins such as beans and grains were gradually adopted. Soybeans are braised, mixed with flour and inoculated with a fungus so as to realize fermentation. Then the proteins and starch in the ingredients decompose due to sun and moon exposure and form the delicious soy sauce.

Confucius once commented: "Meat shall be cut square and matched with the right sauce so that I will eat." We could see how much regard people in ancient China paid to sauce during cooking. The bean paste is a spice with much Chinese characteristic, while sauces have held a vital position in Chinese cooking history as well as the world cooking culture.