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Dessert

Chutney

A sweet and tart chutney made from apples, raisins, sugar, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,053 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Chutney

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel, core, and slice the apples, then boil them in 1½ pints of vinegar until they become a pulp.

  2. Boil the sugar in the remaining vinegar until it forms a clear syrup; let it cool.

Make the chutney

  1. Mix the cooled apple pulp, syrup, finely chopped garlic, stoned and chopped Valencia raisins, and cleaned sultanas.

  2. Boil the mixture for 20 minutes, stirring with a wooden spoon.

Bottle and mature

  1. Pour into wide‑necked bottles and cover securely with paper tied with string.

  2. Let it sit for three weeks before using; it improves with time.

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 + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vinegar + garlictop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Raisin + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Sour apples
Break down into a pulp that forms the body of the chutney.
Sultana raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture as they soften in the hot mixture.
Valencia raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture as they soften in the hot mixture.
Coarse brown sugar
Adds sweetness and, once boiled into syrup, helps thicken and preserve the chutney.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the chutney.

The step that matters

Boiling the apples to a pulp in vinegar. Apples must be cooked long enough to fully break down, or the chutney will be chunky and uneven. Acidic vinegar softens the fruit's pectin-rich cell walls more slowly, so the apples need sustained heat and stirring to reach a smooth pulp.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, sugar, mustard, vinegar, garlic):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, mustard, vinegar, garlic. 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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