Name: Florida Barbecue Sauce
Ingredients: 1 stick unsalted butter; 1 cup cider vinegar; 1 cup ketchup; 5 to 6 oz. prepared horseradish; juice of lemons, limes, pineapples, oranges, mangoes, guavas, or tamarinds, your choice; 1 tsp. salt; 1 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce; 1 tsp. hot sauce

Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,099 recipes mention both. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

The recipe

Time20 to 25 minutes

Ingredients

Contains: milk, soy, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

1 stick unsalted butter
1 cup cider vinegar
1 cup ketchup
5 to 6 oz. prepared horseradish
juice of lemons, limes, pineapples, oranges, mangoes, guavas, or tamarinds, your choice
1 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp. hot sauce

Directions

Make the sauce

Melt butter in a medium-sized stainless or enamelware saucepan.
Add the remaining ingredients.
Bring to a boil and simmer, uncovered, for 20 to 25 minutes.

Serve and store

Use as a basting sauce on pork, chicken, and beef and serve as a table sauce.
Left-over sauce can be refrigerated and kept up to 2 or 3 weeks.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

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.

Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,099 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Cider + vinegartop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together402 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).
Ketchup + horseradishtop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together223 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Horseradish + saucetop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together775 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Vinegar + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together2,588 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Adds richness and body, rounding out the sharp vinegar and horseradish.
Cider vinegar: Provides acidity that gives the sauce its tang.
Ketchup: Adds sweetness, body and a red color to the sauce.
Prepared horseradish: Contributes a sharp, pungent heat that mellows somewhat during simmering.
Citrus or tropical fruit juice: Adds acidity and fruity brightness to balance the sauce.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, cider, vinegar, ketchup, horseradish, sauce):

Applebetter flavor fit
Grapebetter flavor fit
Currantbetter flavor fit
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cider, vinegar, ketchup, horseradish, 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).

“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.