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Sauce

English Sauce

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

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. Boil the apples in 1 pint of vinegar until soft.

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

  3. Dissolve the brown sugar in 1 pint of vinegar to make a syrup.

Combine and jar

  1. Once the apples are cool, mix them with the garlic, onions, raisins, mustard seed, pepper, ground ginger, cayenne, and the remaining vinegar.

  2. Blend everything well together.

  3. Jar 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. 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

Apples
Break down into a soft body that gives the sauce its thickness and bulk.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a syrupy body that balances the sharp vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the sauce.
Mustard seed
Contributes pungent, sharp flavour and some texture to the sauce.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy bits that soften the sharpness.

The step that matters

Boil the apples until soft. The apples must cook fully so they break down into a smooth base; undercooked pieces stay firm and make the sauce grainy and uneven.

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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