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Bengal Chutney

A sweet and sour chutney made with sugar, salt, mustard, garlic, onion, ginger, raisins, cayenne, vinegar, apples, and tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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. Chop garlic, onion, and raisins finely.

  2. Boil sour apples and ripe tomatoes in water until soft, then mash them.

Make the chutney

  1. Mix all ingredients together.

  2. Cook the mixture until thoroughly soft.

  3. Bottle the chutney.

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

Sour apples
Add tartness and pectin that help the chutney thicken as it cooks.
Ripe tomatoes
Provide moisture and body that break down into the chutney base.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness and acidity that balances sweetness and helps preserve the chutney.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and depth, and helps thicken the chutney as it cooks down.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture to the finished chutney.
Onion
Adds savory bulk and aroma that mellow during long cooking.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture until thoroughly soft. Long, slow cooking softens the fruit and vegetables and drives off excess water, so the chutney thickens rather than staying thin. Stopping early leaves it watery and less stable in the jar.

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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