Skip to main content
Main

Chutney Sauce

A fruit chutney sauce made with green gooseberries or apples, vinegar, sugar, salt, raisins, currants, ginger, mustard, Jamaica pepper, nutmeg, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chutney Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Boil the green gooseberries or apples until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. Add vinegar, coarse sugar, salt, raisins, currants, powdered ginger, mustard, ground Jamaica pepper, nutmeg, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Boil the mixture for 20 to 30 minutes.

  3. Rub the mixture through a strainer.

Bottle

  1. Allow to cool and then bottle.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Apple + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

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

  5. Ginger + mustardtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,456 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

Green gooseberries or apples
Cook down to a soft pulp that forms the body of the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the sauce.
Coarse sugar
Adds sweetness that offsets the acidity and gives the sauce a rounded flavour.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and a soft, chewy texture to the sauce.
Currants
Contribute fruity sweetness and depth of flavour.
Mustard
Adds pungent, sharp flavour that gives the sauce its bite.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a strainer. Rubbing the cooked fruit through a strainer separates the pulp from skins, seeds and spice solids. Skipping or rushing this leaves a coarse, gritty sauce rather than a smooth one.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, vinegar, sugar, raisin, ginger, mustard, pepper. 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

Apple SoupApple Soup33 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes