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Sauce

Chetney Sauce

A sauce made from raisins, crabs or other hard acid fruit, sugar, ginger, salt, cayenne pepper, garlic, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Chetney Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stone the raisins and chop them finely.

  2. Chop the crabs or other acid fruit.

  3. In a mortar, grind the sugar, ginger, salt, and cayenne pepper separately until fine.

Make the sauce

  1. Pound the fruits well and mix in the spices one by one.

  2. Beat the mixture until perfectly blended.

  3. Gradually add vinegar until the sauce reaches the consistency of thick cream.

Bottle

  1. Transfer the sauce to a bottle and add the garlic cloves, then cork 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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  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

Crabs or other hard acid fruit
Provides the acidic fruit base that gives the sauce its tartness and body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity and thins the mixture to a thick, pourable cream consistency.
Coarse brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the fruit and vinegar.
Raisins
Adds sweetness and concentrated fruit flavour, helping thicken the sauce as it is pounded.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat that gives the sauce its pungent bite.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that deepens as the sauce sits in the bottle.

The step that matters

Pound the fruits well and mix in the spices one by one. Thorough pounding breaks down the fruit so the spices distribute evenly; adding them all at once can leave clumps and uneven pungency.

Swap the raisin

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, sugar, ginger, pepper, garlic, clove, 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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