Vodka sauce Vodka sauce Vodka sauce is an American cuisine sauce made from a smooth tomato sauce, vodka, typical Italian herbs and heavy cream, which gives the sauce its distinctive orange coloration. It gained popularity in the 1970s, when a variation won a national recipe contest in Italy, although it may well have been a sauce before its popularization in the 1970s. It is a key ingredient in penne alla vodka. The vodka's function is, ostensibly, to release flavors in the tomato that are normally inaccessible; using alcoholic beverages for this purpose is common in Italian cooking, although usually accomplished with wine.
Oyster sauce of MSG and non-MSG variants is similar as oyster sauce naturally contains large amounts of glutamate. In 19th century French and English cooking, "oyster sauce" referred to a variant of sauce blanche flavoured with oysters, using a base of milk and melted butter rather than purely reducing the oysters by cooking. The white sauce version was moistened with cream, whereas in brown oyster sauce, the cream was replaced with gravy. Common recipes using the sauce included "Steak and oyster sauce", documented as early as 1806, and "Cod and oyster sauce". This sauce was still being eaten in Australia in the