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Sauce

Chutna Sauce

A spicy, sweet sauce made from raisins, sugar, salt, ginger, onions, mustard seed, chillies, garlic, green gooseberries, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Chutna Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the raisins, ginger, onions, mustard seed, chillies, garlic, and green gooseberries (or apples/grapes) finely and separately.

  2. Mix all the chopped ingredients together in a large bowl.

  3. Add the vinegar and stir well to combine.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Mustard + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

  4. Ginger + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 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

Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy body as they soften in the vinegar.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, caramel-like flavour to balance the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens the sauce and helps preserve it.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma and sharpness to the sauce.
Ginger
Adds warm, sharp aroma and a gentle spicy bite.
Green gooseberries
Add tartness and body, giving the chutney its fresh, sharp character.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, ginger, onion, mustard, garlic, apple, vinegar):

  1. Plumfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger, onion, mustard, garlic, apple, vinegar. 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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