Skip to main content
Sauce

Governor's Sauce

A sauce made from green tomatoes, onions, peppers, ginger, mustard, brown sugar, horseradish, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Governor's Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Slice the green tomatoes and sprinkle heavily with coarse sea salt.

  2. Let them stand overnight.

  3. In the morning, drain the tomatoes well and cover them with vinegar.

Simmer the sauce

  1. Simmer the tomatoes with the onions, red peppers, ginger, black pepper, red pepper, mustard, brown sugar, and horseradish for a little over 2 hours.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the sauce and, once salted and drained, a firm texture that holds up during long simmering.
Onions
Add sweetness and body as they soften into the sauce during the long simmer.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the acidity of the vinegar and tomatoes.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the sauce.
Horseradish
Contributes sharp pungency that mellows and deepens during simmering.

The step that matters

Drain the salted tomatoes well. Salt draws water out of the sliced tomatoes overnight. If they are not drained thoroughly before the vinegar is added, the excess liquid dilutes the sauce and weakens its consistency and flavor.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, onion, pepper, ginger, mustard, sugar, horseradish. 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.

You might also like

Ginger SauceGinger Sauce12 recipesMixed MustardMixed Mustard9 recipesHorseradish Cream SauceHorseradish Cream Sauce6 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipes