Skip to main content
Main

Cashmere Chutney

A sweet and spicy chutney made with apples, raisins, dates, garlic, ginger, pepper, salt, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Garlic and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,402 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cashmere Chutney

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Do not peel the apples.

  2. Chop all ingredients except the dates.

Make the chutney

  1. Boil the fruit in enough vinegar to cover it until soft.

  2. Add the chopped ingredients, cutting the dates into small pieces.

  3. Boil for 10 minutes.

Bottle and mellow

  1. Bottle and cork well.

  2. Allow to mellow for some time for best flavor.

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. Garlic + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

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

  2. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 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. Raisin + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide bulk and pectin, which helps the chutney thicken as it cooks.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the chutney while softening its texture.
Sultana raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture to the chutney.
Dates
Add sweetness and soft body, breaking down into a thick, rich mass.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that softens the fruit and helps preserve the chutney.

The step that matters

Boil the fruit until soft. The fruit must be fully softened in the vinegar before the other ingredients are added. Underdone fruit stays firm and uneven, and the pectin in the apples only releases its thickening power once the fruit has broken down.

Swap the dates

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

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

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

You might also like

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