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Pepper Sauce

A spicy sauce made from peppers, cabbage, horseradish, mustard, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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 vinegar and vegetables

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

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

  3. For the bell pepper version, cut the stems off and halve the peppers.

  4. Combine the halved peppers with 2 quarts of vinegar and 1 quart of water.

Cook and season

  1. Add grated horseradish and chopped onions.

  2. Boil until soft.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Season to taste with salt, black mustard, and white mustard.

  5. Boil for an additional 10 minutes.

  6. Add celery seed and strong pepper if desired.

Bottle

  1. 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 main body, pungency and flavour of the sauce.
Cabbage
Adds bulk and body, softening into the sauce as it cooks.
Cider vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the sauce and sharpens its flavour.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and depth as they soften during boiling.
Horseradish
Contributes a sharp, pungent heat that gives the sauce its bite.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and rounds out the flavour.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a sieve. Boiled vegetables must be pushed fully through the sieve to form a smooth sauce; any left-over fibre or seed will leave a coarse texture, and the sieve must be cleared of pulp so the liquid strains evenly.

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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