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Sauce

English Sauce

A sweet and spicy sauce made with brown sugar, vinegar, apples, raisins, garlic, onions, pepper, ginger, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 the apples

  1. Boil 1 pint of vinegar and add the chopped apples; cook until soft.

Make the syrup

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

  2. 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, and the remaining vinegar.

  2. Blend all ingredients well and jar for storage.

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

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

  5. Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 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

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the syrup, balancing the sharp vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens the sauce and helps preserve it.
Apples
Cooked soft to add bulk, natural sweetness and smooth body.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma and sharp flavour that mellows during storage.
Onions
Adds savoury depth and aroma to the sauce base.
Raisins
Adds concentrated sweetness and a thick, chewy texture.

The step that matters

Cooling the apples before mixing. Adding hot apples to the other ingredients can cause uneven texture and dull flavour. Letting them cool first keeps the blend smooth and the flavours fresh-tasting.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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