Skip to main content
Main

Spanish Sauce

A pickled vegetable sauce made with cucumbers, onions, cabbage, green peppers, mustard, sugar, mustard seed, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Spanish Sauce

Why it works: Cucumber and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,281 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Spanish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the cucumbers, onions, cabbage, and green peppers finely.

  2. Drain the chopped vegetables in separate bags.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pot, combine the mustard, sugar, and mustard seed.

  2. Cook the mixture well in vinegar.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together722 recipes

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

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

Cucumbers
Make up the bulk of the sauce and give it a crisp, fresh texture.
Onions
Add savory depth and body as they soften in the sauce.
Mustard seed
Provides the sharp, pungent mustard flavor of the sauce.
White sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard.
Vinegar
Provides acidity and the cooking liquid that softens the vegetables and sharpens the sauce.
Coleman's mustard
Adds extra heat and pungency to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture well in vinegar. Mustard's pungency develops when ground seed meets liquid and mellows with heat, so a thorough cook in vinegar softens the sharp bite. Heat and acid also soften the vegetables, so the sauce tastes balanced rather than raw.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, cabbage, pepper, mustard, sugar, vinegar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cabbage, pepper, mustard, sugar, vinegar. 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

Red CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipesCabbage DressingCabbage Dressing19 recipes