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Dessert

Chutnee Sauce

A fruit-based sauce made from apples, plums, raisins, brown sugar, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and plum match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Chutnee Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pound apples, plums, stoned raisins, and brown sugar together to a mash.

  2. Add the melon and mix well.

  3. Stir in cayenne pepper, ground ginger, and salt.

  4. Pour in vinegar to achieve a consistency similar to marmalade.

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. Apple + plumtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Plum + melontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together54 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Apple + melontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together86 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Ginger + melontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 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

Apples
Break down into the mash and add body and tartness to the chutney.
Plums
Add fruity bulk and natural acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar.
Stoned raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and a chewy texture to the mash.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavour that balances the spices.
Cayenne pepper
Provides heat that gives the chutney its sharp, spicy character.
Ground ginger
Adds warm, aromatic spice that complements the fruit.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, plum, sugar, pepper, ginger, vinegar, melon):

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, plum, sugar, pepper, ginger, vinegar, melon. 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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