Skip to main content
Main

Good Sweet Chutney

A sweet chutney made from apples, raisins, spices, and vinegar, simmered slowly until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Good Sweet Chutney

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Chop or mince all ingredients.

Cook

  1. Cover and simmer in a pot or cook in a 300°F (150°C) oven very slowly until reduced to a pulp, about 3 hours.

  2. Do not let it boil; if too thick, add more vinegar.

  3. Remove the ginger before bottling.

Rest

  1. Let the chutney sit for 3 weeks before using.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Break down into pulp, forming the body of the chutney.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the chutney as it thickens.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that brightens flavor and helps preserve the chutney.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness as they soften.
Shallots
Add savory depth and aroma as they cook down.

The step that matters

Do not let it boil. Boiling too hard can scorch the sugar-rich mixture on the bottom of the pot and make it bitter. A gentle, very slow simmer lets the apples break down evenly into a smooth pulp while the liquid reduces slowly.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, raisin, pepper, ginger, lemon, shallot, garlic):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin, pepper, ginger, lemon, shallot, 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesApple SoupApple Soup33 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes