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Chutney Sauce

A tomato chutney made with tomatoes, raisins, ginger, cayenne pepper, garlic, sugar, vinegar, and salt, simmered and stored in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,076 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Chutney Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Clean and skin the tomatoes.

  2. Stew the tomatoes in 1 quart of vinegar.

Make the chutney

  1. Add finely chopped raisins, sugar, and garlic.

  2. Mix ginger, cayenne pepper, and salt in the remaining vinegar before adding to the other ingredients.

  3. Boil all together on low heat for 30 minutes.

Rest and store

  1. Let the mixture stand in a large bowl for 3 days, stirring often.

  2. Transfer to jars for storage.

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Ginger + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 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

Fresh tomatoes
Provide the main body and bulk of the chutney as they break down during stewing.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture as they soften in the vinegar.
White granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the chutney while balancing the vinegar's acidity.
French white wine vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the chutney its tang and helps preserve it.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma and savory depth to the chutney.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand for 3 days, stirring often. Standing lets the flavours of the tomato, vinegar, spices and sugar blend and mellow, and regular stirring keeps the solids evenly moistened and prevents uneven softening or sticking.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, ginger, pepper, garlic, sugar, white wine, 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.

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