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Bordeaux Sauce

A pickled vegetable sauce made with green tomatoes, onions, cabbage, and red peppers in a vinegar and spice mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Bordeaux Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the green tomatoes, onions, cabbage, and red peppers finely.

Make the sauce

  1. In a large pot, combine the vinegar, coarse sea salt, white mustard seed, sugar, celery seed, cloves, allspice, and turmeric, then heat the mixture until hot.

  2. Add the chopped cabbage.

  3. Cook for at least 1 hour, stirring constantly to prevent burning.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 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 tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the sauce and its tart, fresh body as they soften.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its sharp tang and helps preserve it.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and adds sweetness.
Onions
Add savory depth and body as they cook down into the sauce.
Cabbage
Adds bulk and texture, softening during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Stirring during the long cook. The chopped vegetables and sugar sit on the bottom of the pot and can scorch quickly over the long cook. Constant stirring keeps the heat even and prevents burning, which would leave a bitter, dark taste.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, cabbage, pepper, vinegar, mustard, sugar, celery):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, cabbage, pepper, vinegar, mustard, sugar, celery. 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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