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North Carolina BBQ Sauce

"This was my favorite barbecue sauce growing up. It's vinegar-based with no ketchup. It's very tangy, very thin, and wonderful on pork, chicken, and even tofu!"

By allrecipes · From Open Recipes · 7 ingredients
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North Carolina BBQ Sauce

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,047 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

North Carolina BBQ Sauce

1 gallon
Prep5 min
Cook30 min

Ingredients

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By allrecipes. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mustard + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, pepper, mustard, sauce):

  1. Limebetter flavor fit
  2. Avocadoabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Cherryabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, mustard, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).