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Sauce

Chutney Sauce

A preserved apple and tamarind chutney with tomatoes, onions, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chutney Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chutney

  1. Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a jar and cover it well.

Mature and bottle

  1. Stir the mixture every day for 4 to 5 weeks.

  2. If the chutney is too thin after this time, pour off some liquid to achieve the desired thickness.

  3. Bottle the chutney in jars for use.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Tamarind + gingertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together325 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + tamarindtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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

Apples
Break down during long standing to give the chutney body and fruity sweetness.
Moist sugar
Sweetens and helps preserve the chutney while it matures.
Tamarinds
Add sourness and depth of flavour to the chutney.
Onions
Add savoury bulk and moisture that softens over the long standing time.
Vinegar
Acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the chutney.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and supports preservation.

The step that matters

Stirring daily while the chutney matures. Daily stirring keeps the solids evenly distributed and exposes the mixture to air, so it thickens and mellows evenly rather than separating or drying unevenly. Thinness after standing is corrected by pouring off liquid, as the record directs.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, tomato, tamarind, pepper, ginger, lemon):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, tomato, tamarind, pepper, ginger, lemon. 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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