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Sauce

Tapp Sauce

A fermented mango sauce with raisins, garlic, chillies, ginger, sugar, salt, vinegar, and lime juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mango and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 506 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Tapp Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and peel the mangoes, then slice them.

  2. Grind the raisins, garlic, chillies, and green ginger.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the ground ingredients with sugar, salt, vinegar, and lime juice.

  2. Put the mixture into stone jars and expose to the sun for a month.

  3. After a month, drain away the liquid, which is the sauce.

  4. Boil the liquid for 15 minutes, then let it cool.

Bottle

  1. Bottle and cork the sauce.

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. Mango + limetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Ginger + limetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,621 recipes

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

  3. Mango + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Garlic + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

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

  5. Garlic + limetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,411 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the sauce during its long sun standing.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and savory depth to the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of vinegar and lime.
Dry chillies
Provide heat and pungency to the sauce.
Raisins
Add sweetness and body as they break down during standing.
Lime juice
Adds acidity and brightness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the drained liquid. Boiling after the month in the sun stops fermentation and microbial activity, helping the sauce keep once bottled. Letting it cool before bottling prevents steam and condensation from weakening the seal and the flavor.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mango, garlic, ginger, sugar, vinegar, lime):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mango, garlic, ginger, sugar, vinegar, lime. 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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