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Sauce

Bordeaux Sauce

A pickled cabbage sauce with onions, peppers, spices, sugar, vinegar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Bordeaux Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine all ingredients in a large pot.

  2. Boil for 30 minutes.

  3. Pour into cans while hot.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Turmeric + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Turmeric + allspicetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the sauce and softens into a tender, spoonable texture when boiled.
Onions
Adds savory body and a mellow sweetness as they cook down into the sauce.
Brown sugar
Provides sweetness and a thick, rich body that balances the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the sugar.

The step that matters

Boil for 30 minutes. A full, steady boil for the stated time softens the cabbage and onions and dissolves the sugar, so the spices and vinegar blend evenly into one sauce rather than staying separate.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, pepper, turmeric, allspice, mustard, celery, sugar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Cauliflowerfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, pepper, turmeric, allspice, mustard, celery, sugar. 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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