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Dessert

Chutney

A preserved apple chutney made with mustard, sugar, vinegar, salt, chillies, and sealed in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chutney

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Husk the mustard seed and grind it in a mortar.

  2. Boil the sugar with the white wine vinegar until it forms a thick syrup.

Salt and steam the apples

  1. Layer the sliced apples in a dish and sprinkle with ¼ pound coarse sea salt.

  2. Cover the apples and let sit for 15 hours or overnight.

  3. Pour ½ cup white wine vinegar over the apples and steam until tender but not broken.

  4. Let the apples cool.

Combine and jar

  1. Add the cold syrup, powdered chillies, and remaining salt to the apples; mix thoroughly.

  2. Pack the mixture into small jars, pressing out air bubbles.

  3. Seal the jars with corks or cover with melted paraffin.

  4. Let the chutney stand for six weeks before using.

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 + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. White wine + appletop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Vinegar + appletop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,884 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Make up the bulk of the chutney and soften into tender pieces when steamed.
Sugar
Sweetens the chutney and, boiled with vinegar, forms a thick syrup.
White wine vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the chutney.
White mustard seed
Adds a pungent, sharp flavour once husked and ground.
Powdered chillies
Adds heat and pungency to the chutney.

The step that matters

Steam the apples until tender but not broken. Pectin and cell walls in apples soften with heat, so stopping at tender keeps the pieces intact. Overcooking breaks them down into mush and loses the chunky texture the chutney needs.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, white wine, vinegar, apple):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Cucumberfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, white wine, vinegar, 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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