Doubanjiang in the context of "Hot pot"

In cooking, a sauce is a liquid, cream, or semi-solid food, served on or used in preparing other foods. Most sauces are not normally consumed by themselves; they add flavour, texture, and visual appeal to a dish. Sauce is a French word probably from the post-classical Latin salsa, derived from the classical salsus 'salted'. Possibly the oldest recorded European sauce is garum, the fish sauce used by the Ancient Romans, while doubanjiang, the Chinese soy bean paste, is mentioned in Rites of Zhou 20.

Sauces need a liquid component. Sauces are an essential element in cuisines all over the world.

Jiuqu (Chinese: 酒曲; lit. 'liquor yeast'), also simply known as qu, is a type of dried fermentation starter used in the production of traditional Chinese alcoholic beverages. The word jiuqu specifically refers to a type of yeast (曲; 麴; qū) used to make alcohol (酒; jiǔ) such as huangjiu (cereal wine), baijiu (distilled spirits) and jiuniang (alcoholic rice pudding).

Other forms of starters are used for different fermentations, such as soy sauce, rice vinegar, fermented bean curd, and paste. The starter culture for these foods are also known as qu.Jiuqu is similar to, but distinct from, the more widely known Japanese starter known as koji.