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English Sauce

A vinegar-based sauce with apples, raisins, garlic, onions, spices, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion 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 ↓

English Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit and vegetables

  1. Boil 1 pint of vinegar and add the chopped apples; cook until soft.

  2. Chop the garlic and onions finely and bruise them well.

Make the syrup

  1. In a separate pot, dissolve the brown sugar in 1 pint of vinegar to make a syrup.

Combine and jar

  1. Once the apples are cool, combine them with the garlic, onions, and the remaining vinegar.

  2. Mix in the chopped raisins, pepper, ground ginger, mustard seed, and cayenne pepper; blend well.

  3. Jar the mixture for storage.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

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

  5. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 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

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharp vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the sauce its tang and helps preserve it.
Apples
Cooked soft, they add body and natural sweetness to the sauce.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.
Mustard seed
Contributes pungent flavour and a slight texture to the sauce.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and sharp flavour.

The step that matters

Cool the apples before combining. Adding hot apples to the other ingredients can change their texture and flavour unevenly, so letting them cool first keeps the blend consistent.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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