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Sauce

Indian Sauce

A sauce made from green tomatoes, onions, sour apples, raisins, and spices, boiled until clear.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Indian Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the green tomatoes, onions, and sour apples finely, leaving the raisins whole.

  2. Mix all the chopped ingredients with the brown sugar, mustard, black pepper, red pepper, coarse sea salt, raisins, vinegar, and cinnamon.

  3. Cover the mixture and boil until clear.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk and tart flavour that forms the body of the sauce.
Sour apples
Add acidity and pectin that help the sauce thicken as it cooks.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the vinegar and fruit.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the sauce.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil until clear. Boiling evaporates water and lets the sugar, fruit pectin and vinegar concentrate and thicken the sauce. Stopping too early leaves it thin and cloudy, while overcooking can scorch the sugars on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the raisin

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, apple, sugar, mustard, pepper, 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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