Skip to main content
Main

Chetney Sauce

A sauce made with raisins, crabs or other acid fruit, sugar, ginger, salt, cayenne pepper, garlic, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Chetney Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit and spices

  1. Chop the raisins and crabs or acid fruit finely.

  2. Grind the sugar, ginger, salt, and cayenne pepper separately until fine.

  3. Pound the fruits well.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix in the spices one by one.

  2. Beat the mixture until perfectly blended.

  3. Add vinegar gradually until it reaches a thick cream consistency.

Bottle

  1. Transfer the sauce into a bottle.

  2. Add the garlic cloves.

  3. Cork it tightly.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Ginger + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

  5. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 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

Raisins
Add sweetness and body, softening into the sauce as the fruit is pounded.
Crabs or other acid fruit
Supplies the sharp acidity that gives the sauce its tang.
Coarse brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavour that balances the acidity.
Powdered ginger
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavour.
Cayenne pepper
Provides heat that gives the sauce its pungent kick.
Vinegar
Thins the mixture to a thick cream consistency and adds further acidity.

The step that matters

Add vinegar gradually until it reaches a thick cream consistency. Vinegar thins the mixture quickly, so adding it in small amounts while beating lets you stop at a thick cream texture rather than an over-thin sauce.

Swap the raisin

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, sugar, ginger, pepper, garlic, clove, 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.

You might also like

Crab SoupCrab Soup39 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes