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Sauce

Governor’s Sauce

A fermented green tomato sauce with peppers, onions, sugar, horseradish, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice 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 ↓

Governor’s Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Slice the green tomatoes.

  2. Sprinkle the sliced tomatoes with salt.

  3. Let them stand overnight.

  4. In the morning, pour off the liquid.

Cook the sauce

  1. Put the tomatoes in a kettle and cover with vinegar.

  2. Add the peppers, onions, brown sugar, horseradish, cloves, allspice, cayenne, and white pepper.

  3. Simmer until soft.

Jar

  1. Transfer to jars and seal tightly.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Horseradish + allspicetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Form the bulk of the sauce and, after salting, release liquid for a firmer texture.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the sliced tomatoes, firming them and concentrating their flavour.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the sauce its tang and helps preserve it.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and depth, balancing the acidity of the vinegar.
Onions
Add savoury bulk and sweetness that mellow as they simmer.
Horseradish
Contributes a sharp, pungent heat that fades during simmering.

The step that matters

Simmer until soft. Simmering long enough softens the tomatoes and onions fully and lets the vinegar and sugar blend into a cohesive sauce. Stopping early leaves the texture chunky and the flavours sharp.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, onion, sugar, horseradish, clove, allspice. 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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