Skip to main content
Sauce

Pepper Sauce

A vinegar-based sauce made with peppers, cabbage, horseradish, mustard, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Infuse and combine

  1. Boil the spices and sugar in 2 quarts of cider vinegar.

  2. Pour the boiling mixture over the chopped cabbage and peppers.

Cook the sauce

  1. Combine 4 dozen bell peppers, 2 quarts vinegar, and 1 quart water in a pot.

  2. Add 3 tablespoons grated horseradish.

  3. Add 5 chopped onions.

  4. Boil until soft.

  5. Strain through a sieve.

  6. Season to taste with salt, spices, and mustard.

  7. Boil for an additional 10 minutes.

Finish and bottle

  1. Add celery seed.

  2. Add strong pepper if desired.

  3. Bottle and cork tightly.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 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

Peppers
Provide the bulk of the sauce and its main body as they soften and break down.
Cabbage
Adds bulk and body, and softens into the sauce during cooking.
Cider vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the sauce and sharpens its flavour.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent heat that fades somewhat with boiling.
Mustard seed
Contributes sharp, pungent flavour that mellows during cooking.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil until soft. Cooking until the peppers and onions are fully soft lets them break down so the sauce strains smoothly. Undercooked pieces stay firm, block the sieve and leave a coarse texture.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, cabbage, horseradish, mustard, clove, sugar, cider):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cabbage, horseradish, mustard, clove, sugar, cider. 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.

You might also like

Cider SauceCider Sauce15 recipesMixed MustardMixed Mustard9 recipesHorseradish Cream SauceHorseradish Cream Sauce6 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipes