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Bengal Chutney

A sweet and spicy chutney made with brown sugar, salt, mustard, garlic, onions, ginger, raisins, cayenne, vinegar, apples, tomatoes, turmeric, and ground mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Bengal Chutney

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grind the mustard seed or boil it in 1 pint of vinegar.

  2. Chop the onions finely.

  3. Cook the apples and tomatoes separately until soft, then mash them fine through a colander.

Mix and store

  1. When cool, mix all ingredients well.

  2. Store in a stone jar and let it sit behind the stove for a few days.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Mustard + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  4. Garlic + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Cooked and mashed to form the body and bulk of the chutney.
Tomatoes
Cooked and mashed to add moisture and a soft, pulpy texture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharp vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the chutney and sharpens its flavour.
Mustard seed
Supplies a sharp, pungent flavour when ground or softened in vinegar.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy bits throughout the chutney.

The step that matters

Cook the apples and tomatoes separately until soft. Cooking softens the fruit and breaks down its cell walls so it mashes smooth. Undercooked pieces stay firm and give an uneven texture in the finished chutney.

Swap the raisin

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, mustard, garlic, onion, ginger, 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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