India, May 3 -- What do you suppose is India's favourite bottled sauce? If you answered 'Tomato Ketchup', you would probably be right. But despite the current sauce boom and the growing popularity of mayonnaise, I would venture to suggest that our favourite sauce after ketchup is soya sauce.

Most of us have grown up with soya sauce. Not in our home cooking but at Chinese restaurants and through Chinese takeaways. In fact, the foundations of Indian-Chinese (or Sino Ludhianvi) food rely on two bottled sauces: tomato ketchup and soya sauce. And of the two, soya sauce is the defining characteristic of Sino Ludhianvi food. No matter how many Punjabi masalas you use, as long as you put some soya in the pan (or wok), you can claim it is Chinese...