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Sauce

Banden Sauce

A pickled sauce of green tomatoes and cabbage with sugar, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Banden Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the green tomatoes and cabbage thickly.

  2. Mix with coarse sea salt and let stand overnight.

  3. Drain the mixture and place it in a kettle.

Cook and jar

  1. Add brown sugar, celery seed, mustard seed, ground cloves, white pepper, white ginger root, turmeric, and vinegar.

  2. Boil for 1 hour.

  3. Put the sauce in jars and seal 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. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,840 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk and tart body of the sauce as they cook down.
Cabbage
Adds bulk and soft texture as it softens during cooking and overnight salting.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the vinegar and tomatoes.
Vinegar
Supplies acidity that gives the sauce its tang and helps preserve it.
Mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, pungent flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil for 1 hour. The long boil must cook the chopped vegetables fully and reduce the liquid so the sauce thickens and the flavors meld. Too short a boil leaves it watery and raw-tasting, which can also affect how well it keeps in sealed jars.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, cabbage, sugar, celery, mustard, clove, ginger):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, cabbage, sugar, celery, mustard, clove, ginger. 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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