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English Sauce

A sweet and tangy sauce made with apples, raisins, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

English Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the apples in 1 pint of vinegar until soft.

  2. Chop the garlic and onions finely and bruise them well.

  3. Make a syrup with the brown sugar and 1 pint of vinegar.

Combine and jar

  1. Once the apples are cool, mix them with the garlic, onions, raisins, remaining vinegar, and all other ingredients. Blend well together.

  2. Jar the sauce.

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 + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Garlic + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Break down when boiled, giving the sauce body and a soft, fruity base.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and, dissolved into a syrup, helps balance the sharp vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives the sauce its tang and helps preserve it.
Garlic
Contributes pungent, savory aroma and flavor once bruised and mixed in.
Onions
Add savory depth and sharpness to the sauce's overall flavor.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture to the blended sauce.

The step that matters

Let the apples cool before mixing. Adding hot apples to the other ingredients can cause uneven texture and uneven blending, so cooling them first lets everything combine smoothly and evenly.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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