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Pepper Sauce

A spicy sauce made with peppers, cabbage, horseradish, mustard seed, cloves, sugar, mace, and cider 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 spiced vinegar

  1. Finely chop the horseradish.

  2. Combine the spices and sugar in a pot with the cider vinegar.

  3. Boil the mixture.

Combine with the vegetables

  1. Pour the boiling hot mixture over the chopped cabbage and peppers.

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 main pepper flavor and some heat to the sauce.
Cabbage
Adds bulk and a crisp texture to the sauce.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps keep the sauce.
Horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, aromatic bite.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling hot mixture over the vegetables. Hot vinegar softens the cabbage and peppers and draws in their flavor, while its acidity helps preserve the sauce. Letting the mixture cool first would weaken both effects.

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.

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