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Sauce

English Sauce

A sauce made with brown sugar, salt, garlic, onions, pepper, ginger, mustard seed, raisins, apples, cayenne pepper, and vinegar.

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 the apples

  1. Boil 1 pint of vinegar and use it to boil the chopped apples until soft.

Prepare the flavourings

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

  2. Make a syrup by dissolving the brown sugar in 1 pint of vinegar.

Combine and store

  1. Once the apples are cool, mix them with the garlic, onions, raisins, and the remaining vinegar.

  2. Blend everything well together 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 + 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
Cooked down to soft pieces that give the sauce body and a fruity base.
Brown sugar
Dissolved into vinegar to add sweetness that balances the sharp acidity.
Vinegar
Provides the main acidity and liquid, and helps preserve the sauce.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture as they blend into the sauce.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that carries through the sauce.

The step that matters

Dissolving the brown sugar in the vinegar syrup. Sugar dissolves fully only when the vinegar is warm enough and stirred well; undissolved grains leave a gritty texture and uneven sweetness throughout the sauce.

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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