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Easy
By Irene Kuo
Published 1977
Even though the sauce has an established flavor, it can vary slightly from cook to cook. It is primarily a soy sauce brine mellowed by wine and sugar and seasoned with star anise, fennel seeds, cinnamon stick, and dried tangerine peel. But some people make it richer by using stock instead of water or spicier by adding Szechuan peppercorns, dried licorice roots, and five-fragrance powder. The special sauce for mutton, prepared in the Muslim restaurants in Peking, called for no fewer than twe