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Sauce

Governor's Sauce

A fermented sauce made from green tomatoes, peppers, onions, salt, vinegar, horseradish, sugar, cloves, allspice, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Governor's Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the green tomatoes, green peppers, and onions.

  2. Sprinkle the salt over the vegetables and let them stand overnight.

  3. Strain off the pulp and place it in a kettle.

Cook

  1. Add enough vinegar to cover the pulp.

  2. Stir in the horseradish, sugar, cloves, allspice, and cinnamon.

  3. Simmer until soft.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Horseradish + allspicetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Form the bulk of the sauce and provide its tart body once simmered.
Onions
Add savory depth and sweetness as they soften during cooking.
Green peppers
Contribute fresh, vegetal flavor and soft texture to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its sharp tang and helps preserve it.
Sugar
Balances the vinegar's sharpness with sweetness.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, onion, vinegar, horseradish, sugar, clove, allspice):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, vinegar, horseradish, sugar, clove, allspice. 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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