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Sauce

Pepper Sauce

A sauce made from boiled peppers, onions, garlic, horseradish, and spices, finished with wine vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pepper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the peppers, salt, garlic, onions, and horseradish together until well cooked.

  2. Strain the mixture through a wire sieve.

  3. For every pint of the mixture, add a pint of wine vinegar.

  4. Add the ground black pepper, allspice, and cloves to the mixture.

  5. Boil again for 4 to 5 minutes.

  6. Bottle and seal 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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Horseradish + allspicetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Red peppers
Provide the bulk of the sauce, along with their sweetness and flavour.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and body as they soften during boiling.
Wine vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its tang and helps preserve it.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma and savoury depth to the sauce.
Horseradish
Adds sharp pungency that gives the sauce its heat.

The step that matters

Strain the cooked mixture through a wire sieve. Straining removes fibrous pulp and seeds so the sauce becomes smooth and pourable rather than chunky. Pressing the solids through the sieve gives a fuller, more even texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, garlic, horseradish, wine, vinegar, allspice, clove):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, garlic, horseradish, wine, vinegar, allspice, clove. 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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