Hoisin

Sugar cuts skin fat, anise stops it cloying. Hoisin is the export stand-in for tianmianjiang.

Raw allium batons are the only sharp thing in a pancake of fat and sugar.

Water and crunch, and it stops the sauce coating the roof of your mouth.

Char siu logic: sugar lacquers, soy salts, and the fat carries them both.

Squeezed over pho, which half of Vietnam regards as a criminal offence.

Roast nut fat and sweet soy: the standard dipping split across two bowls.

It is already in the jar. More just makes the braise taste like it should.

Sponge flesh takes a thick sweet sauce that slides off anything firmer.

Skin, sugar and five-spice. It burns fast, so the heat has to stay low.

Both sweet and acidic; the enzyme tenderises while the sauce does the glaze.

Malty acid is the correction for a sauce that is otherwise sugar and salt.

Fermented bean on fermented bean, with five-spice standing in for vanilla.

Bitter peel against sweet soy, which is what duck sauce was always aiming at.

Roasty furans and long-fermented soy. Brush both on ribs; it reads as one.