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Sauce

Pepper Sauce

A pickled sauce made from green peppers, cabbage, onions, horseradish, mustard seed, turmeric, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pepper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Sprinkle chopped peppers and cabbage with coarse sea salt and let sit for 24 hours.

  2. Drain the salt from the vegetables.

Make the sauce

  1. Add shredded horseradish, mustard seed, chopped onions, and turmeric (if using).

  2. Boil half the vinegar with the spices for a few minutes.

  3. Pour the hot mixture over the vegetables.

  4. After cooling, add the remaining cold vinegar.

Store

  1. Store in wide‑mouthed bottles.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Horseradish + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together437 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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

Green peppers
Provide the main bulk and fresh, sharp flavour of the sauce.
Cabbage
Adds bulk and a crisp texture that softens during salting.
Mustard seed
Contributes pungent heat and a sharp, mustardy flavour.
Horseradish
Adds pungent, sinus-clearing heat that mellows with time.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the sauce and sharpens its flavour.

The step that matters

Draining the salted vegetables. Salt draws water out of the peppers and cabbage, so they must be drained well before adding the hot vinegar mixture. Leftover salt or liquid can make the sauce overly salty or watery, and the vinegar cannot preserve it as well.

Swap the turmeric

The recipe marks turmeric as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, cabbage, horseradish, mustard, onion, vinegar):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Turmericthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cabbage, horseradish, mustard, onion, vinegar. 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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