Tauco

This is yet another product of the versatile soya bean, once again involving fermentation and a good deal of salt. Two types of bean are used, black and yellow. Tauco makes a most mouth-watering strongly aromatic sauce, quite indescribable and not comparable to any taste known in European cooking (see for example the recipe for Ayam Tauco). The beans should always be crushed to a smooth paste before being mixed with the other ingredients. I prefer the taste of the black beans, but they do make the sauce look rather dark and they leave small black fragments in it. The yellow beans taste very nearly as good and they make a beautiful old-gold coloured sauce which looks more tempting.