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Governor Sauce

A pickled tomato sauce made with green tomatoes, onions, peppers, salt, vinegar, sugar, and pickling spice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Governor Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the green tomatoes, onions, and green peppers.

  2. Place the sliced vegetables in a crock and sprinkle with salt.

  3. Let the mixture sit overnight.

  4. Drain the vegetables well.

Stew

  1. Transfer the drained vegetables to a kettle.

  2. Cover the vegetables with vinegar.

  3. Add sugar and the muslin bag with pickling spice.

  4. Stew slowly for 3 to 4 hours until the tomatoes are soft.

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

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

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Form the bulk of the sauce and break down into a soft, thick body during stewing.
Onions
Add savory depth and sweetness that mellows during long slow cooking.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables overnight, concentrating flavour and firming texture before stewing.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the sauce and balances the sweetness of the sugar.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and tomatoes and helps the sauce thicken as it stews.

The step that matters

Drain the vegetables well. Salting draws out a lot of liquid. If the vegetables stay wet, the sauce stews thin and watery, and the extra liquid dilutes the flavour, so draining thoroughly keeps the final texture thick.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, vinegar, sugar. 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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