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Sauce

Pepper Sauce

A fermented pepper sauce made with bell peppers, vinegar, water, horseradish, onions, mustard, sugar, and optional celery seed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

  1. Remove stems from the ripe bell peppers and cut them in half.

  2. In a large pot, combine the bell peppers, vinegar, water, grated horseradish, and chopped onions.

Cook and season

  1. Boil until soft, then rub the mixture through a sieve.

  2. Season to taste with salt, black mustard, white mustard, and sugar.

  3. If desired, add celery seed and additional strong pepper.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  5. Horseradish + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together835 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe bell peppers
Provide the main body and flavor of the sauce once cooked and sieved.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the sauce its sharp taste and helps preserve it.
Horseradish
Adds pungent heat and sharp aroma to the sauce.
Onions
Add savory depth and body as they soften during boiling.

The step that matters

Boil until soft, then rub through a sieve. The peppers and onions must be cooked fully soft so the mixture passes easily through the sieve. Undercooked pieces leave a coarse, fibrous texture in the finished sauce.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Celerythe original

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