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Sauce

Indian Chetney Sauce

A preserved tomato-based sauce with cayenne, raisins, and vinegar, steeped for a month.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Indian Chetney Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stone the raisins, pare, core, and chop the tomatoes finely.

  2. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well.

Ferment

  1. Put the mixture in a closely covered jar.

  2. Keep in a warm place and stir daily for a month.

Strain and bottle

  1. Strain and bottle for use.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Garlic + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Tomatoes
Provide the bulk and body of the sauce as they break down over time.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the sauce and gives it its sharp tang.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity and sharpness of the sauce.
Cayenne pepper
Provides heat, which intensifies as the sauce matures.
Raisins
Add sweetness and a soft, mellow body as they soften during the long steep.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows and deepens during the long steep.

The step that matters

Keep the jar covered and stir daily for a month. The sealed jar and regular stirring let the acidic mixture steep evenly and mature without spoiling. Skipping the stirring can leave pockets of unmixed ingredients and uneven flavour.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, garlic, shallot, sugar, vinegar, lemon):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, garlic, shallot, sugar, vinegar, lemon. 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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