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Sauce

Pepper Sauce

A pickled sauce made from cabbage, green peppers, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pepper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the cabbage, sprinkle with coarse sea salt, and place under a weight.

  2. Once pressed, pour off the excess water.

  3. Chop the green peppers and add them to the cabbage.

Make and add the spiced vinegar

  1. Boil the spices and seeds in vinegar, tying them in a bag.

  2. When the mixture is cold, pour the vinegar over the cabbage.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the sauce and gives it its crisp, fresh texture.
Green peppers
Add fresh, grassy flavor and crunch to the chopped mixture.
Celery seed
Contributes a warm, savory aroma to the vinegar.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavor when steeped in the vinegar.

The step that matters

Pressing the cabbage under a weight. Salting and pressing draws out excess water so the cabbage stays crisp and the sauce does not turn watery. Pouring off the released liquid is needed for the same reason.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, celery, mustard, allspice, clove):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, celery, mustard, allspice, clove. 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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