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Sauce

English Sauce

A sweet and spicy sauce made with brown sugar, salt, garlic, onions, pepper, ginger, mustard seed, raisins, apples, cayenne, and vinegar.

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

  1. Chop the raisins.

  2. Peel and cut the apples, then boil them in 1 pint of vinegar.

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

  4. Make a syrup with the brown sugar and 1 pint of vinegar.

Combine and jar

  1. Once the apples are cool, mix everything together, including the remaining vinegar, and blend well.

  2. Jar the mixture.

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 body to the syrup, balancing the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the sauce and gives it its sharp flavour.
Apples
Break down when boiled, adding body and mellow sweetness to the sauce.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture to the sauce.
Onions
Contribute savoury depth and aroma once finely chopped and bruised.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and savoury flavour once finely chopped and bruised.

The step that matters

Make the syrup with the brown sugar and vinegar. Dissolving sugar fully into hot vinegar before blending gives an even sweetness. Undissolved sugar can leave grainy pockets and uneven flavour in the finished sauce.

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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