What Is XO Sauce? Origin, Ingredients, Name

Two words on our menus do more work than their size suggests: mentaiko XO. They sit on the cassava and taramasalata at Hamilton Road and on the mentaiko taramasalata at Li’l Habibi, and we have explained the mentaiko half twice — in our guide to mentaiko and in the post on our taramasalata. The XO half has only ever had one line. This is the rest of it: a Hong Kong condiment from the 1980s, named after a bottle of cognac it has never contained.

What XO sauce is

XO sauce is a spicy, savoury condiment made from dried seafood cooked in oil with chilli and garlic. The core of it is dried scallop — conpoy — and dried shrimp, and the classic versions add Jinhua ham, the dry-cured ham from Zhejiang. Some recipes add salted fish and onion. Everything is chopped rather than blended, so the result is not a smooth sauce at all but something closer to a relish: oily, chunky, a little chewy, and very concentrated.

What it tastes of is the reason it exists. Dried scallop and dried shrimp are two of the most savoury things a Cantonese pantry holds, cured ham adds a third layer, and the chilli and garlic sit on top. It is an umami condiment first and a chilli condiment second — which is exactly why it works as a seasoning for plain things. We explained why stacking savoury ingredients multiplies rather than adds in our post on umami; XO sauce is that principle in a jar.

Where it came from

XO sauce was developed in Hong Kong in the 1980s for Cantonese cooking. The Peninsula Hotel’s Chinese restaurant, Spring Moon, is the kitchen most often credited with inventing it, though other restaurants in Tsim Sha Tsui, on the Kowloon side, have their own claims. There is no definitive first recipe on record, and we will not pretend there is.

It is young, then — younger than most of the people who eat it — and it resembles an older condiment, the Fujianese shacha sauce, which is also built on dried seafood. XO is best understood as the luxury end of a family of savoury chilli-and-seafood relishes, not as something that appeared from nowhere.

Why it is called XO

This is the part everyone asks about. “XO” is the grade on a bottle of cognac: extra old. In 1980s Hong Kong, XO cognac was the drink that meant money and taste, and “XO” became shorthand for high quality, prestige and luxury in general. The sauce borrowed the letters for the same reason — and some brands were sold in packaging that deliberately echoed French cognac.

There is no cognac in it. There never was. The name is a statement about the ingredients — dried scallop is expensive — not a description of them. It is a small, perfect piece of 1980s branding that stuck.

How it is used

Mostly as a finishing condiment and a stir-fry seasoning. A spoonful goes into a wok with seafood, greens, noodles or rice; a small dish of it goes on the table for anyone who wants it; it makes plain tofu or steamed fish taste of something. On the morning we wrote this we were reading the menu of a hotel Sunday brunch for a different post, and there it was at the wok station: wok-fried scallop and asparagus with XO sauce — the classic use, scallop seasoned with more scallop.

What “mentaiko XO” means on our card

Our menus print the words, not the recipe, so we will be precise about what they say. At Hamilton Road, under Mezze: CASSAVA & TARAMASALATA — twice-cooked cassava chippies, housemade labne, mentaiko XO, tobiko. At Li’l Habibi on Haji Lane: Mentaiko Taramasalata, 13 — ‘mentaiko xo’, housemade labne, tobiko, crispy shallots, chives — and note that the Li’l Habibi card puts the phrase in quotation marks itself.

As our mentaiko guide puts it, we build the roe into a mentaiko XO, which puts the spicy pollock roe into a chilli-and-savoury paste rather than serving it neat — and that post explains why we go through XO at all. The result folds into a taramasalata — the Greek and Levantine cured-roe dip — which is already a roe dish, so the XO is the bridge between two roe traditions and a third cuisine’s technique.

What the menus do not say is which of the classic XO ingredients ours keeps: whether there is dried scallop or dried shrimp in it, or any cured ham. So we are not going to tell you. If you avoid shellfish or pork, ask your server before you order it — the menu footer at Hamilton Road asks you to tell us about dietary restrictions, and Li’l Habibi’s asks the same, in advance.

A note on pork, because it matters here

Classic XO sauce often contains Jinhua ham. That surprises people who think of it as a seafood sauce, and it is the one thing worth checking on any XO dish anywhere if you do not eat pork. Neither of our venues is halal — we serve pork and alcohol at both — but that is exactly why we would rather you asked about a specific dish than assumed.

Buying and keeping it

Look at the first ingredients. A good jar lists dried scallop high up. If the seafood is far down the list, the oil and chilli are doing most of the work.
Use the oil. The oil on top has absorbed most of the flavour; it is a seasoning on its own for noodles or eggs.
Refrigerate once open and use a clean spoon. It keeps a long while because it is mostly oil and dried ingredients, but the label is the authority on how long.

Where to taste ours

The cassava and taramasalata is on the mezze section at Habibi-san, 29 Hamilton Road (Tuesday to Sunday, 5pm to 11pm). The mentaiko taramasalata is at Li’l Habibi, 55 Haji Lane, from 5.30pm, Tuesday to Sunday. Both cards are on our menu page. Tobiko is the third roe on the same plate, and our guide to ikura, tobiko and mentaiko sorts out which is which. Every ingredient explainer we have written is gathered in our guide to Japanese food in Singapore.

Sources: Wikipedia, “XO sauce” (1980s Hong Kong origin, the Peninsula’s Spring Moon and the rival Tsim Sha Tsui claims, ingredients, the cognac etymology and packaging, the shacha comparison); Colony, The Ritz-Carlton Millenia Singapore, Champagne Brunch menu PDF, read 29 September 2026; our own Hamilton Road food menu and Li’l Habibi menu, unchanged since October 2025 and checked 29 September 2026.