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Governor's Sauce

A tomato-based sauce made with green tomatoes, onions, peppers, horseradish, spices, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Governor's Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Slice the green tomatoes, sprinkle with coarse sea salt, and let sit overnight.

  2. Drain the tomatoes well.

Cook the sauce

  1. Combine the drained tomatoes with onions, red peppers, horseradish, cayenne, black pepper, mustard, and sugar in a pot.

  2. Simmer all ingredients together until cooked through.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the sauce and its tart, fresh base flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the sliced tomatoes, firming them and concentrating flavour before cooking.
Onions
Add savoury depth and body as they soften during simmering.
Red peppers
Add sweetness and colour along with body to the simmered sauce.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent heat that stays noticeable after simmering.
Sugar
Balances the tartness of the green tomatoes with sweetness.

The step that matters

Drain the tomatoes well. Salt draws water out of the sliced tomatoes, but any water left behind dilutes the sauce and prolongs simmering. Thorough draining keeps the sauce thick and concentrated.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, horseradish, mustard, sugar. 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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