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Sauce

Chetney Sauce

A spicy raisin and crab sauce thickened with 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stone and chop the raisins finely.

  2. Chop the crabs or 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 into bottles, adding the garlic cloves, and 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

Raisins
Add sweetness and body, and their pulp thickens the sauce as it is pounded.
Crabs or acid fruit
Provides acidity and the fruit base that gives the sauce its bulk.
Coarse brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses note that balances the acidity and heat.
Cayenne pepper
Supplies pungent heat that gives the sauce its sharp bite.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness and, with the fruit, sets the final thick, creamy consistency.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that deepens as the sauce matures in the bottle.

The step that matters

Gradually add vinegar until the sauce reaches the consistency of thick cream. Vinegar is added in small amounts so the sauce can be judged by eye. Too much thins it past the thick cream texture, and it cannot be undone without adding more solids.

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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