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Shirley Sauce

A tomato-based sauce with salt, pepper, cayenne, allspice, mustard, vinegar, and olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Shirley Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine tomatoes, salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, allspice, mustard, and vinegar in a pot.

  2. Simmer slowly for 3 hours.

Bottle and seal

  1. Let the mixture cool, then bottle it.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of olive oil to each bottle just before sealing to preserve the sauce.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the sauce, providing body, moisture and most of the flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its sharp tang and helps preserve it.
Salt
Seasons the sauce and helps draw out moisture and preserve it.
Mustard
Adds pungent flavour and some emulsifying character to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly for 3 hours. A long, gentle simmer lets the tomatoes break down and the vinegar and spices mellow and meld. Boiling hard can scorch the bottom and make the sauce taste harsh.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, mustard, vinegar, olive):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, mustard, vinegar, olive. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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