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Ingredients: Aji Limon Peppers (50%), Cider Vinegar, Lemon Juice.
So, you’ve surely eaten lemon drops. If you’re in the U.S., it was probably Lemonheads. Hey, you may have even listened to The Lemonheads. But have you had Lemon Drop Sauce? If not, you should probably give it a try – although you may be in for a shock if you’re expecting the sugary-sour taste of your childhood.
It’s made by Cambridge Chilli Farm, a company from the town of Broughton in the Cambridgeshire District of England. They’re a small company that, as the name implies, grows all their own chilies and produces their own hot sauces and other chili products. Their sauces are mostly very simple, and they locally-source almost all of the ingredients that they don’t grow/make themselves – both of which I appreciate.
Their Lemon Drop Sauce features the aji limon chili, a capsicum baccatum cultivar that’s popular in Peruvian cuisine. And as you can see from the ingredient list above, it’s an extremely simple sauce. There’s not even any salt.
Although aji limons have gained popularity in chilihead circles outside of Peru over the last decade or so, not many hot sauces use aji limons, and even fewer feature them so plainly. So this sauce is a gem.
I like the packaging a lot: a medium-sized rectangular bottle with concave sides and a narrow neck, a small cap, and a bright yellow and red label.
The sauce contains at least 50% aji limons – which are bright yellow – but the sauce has a dull, brownish-yellow color due to the cider vinegar.
The sauce smells strongly of cider vinegar. But the smell of those aji limons cuts through. That combo creates a pungent and slightly odd aroma (maybe even a little “stinky”) for most folks used to their hot sauces being habaneroish or cayenneish. However, the smell won’t be too alien, because these chilies also have a familiar citrus smell that’s bolstered by the lemon juice in the sauce.
The texture is watery, but there are a lot of seeds and finely-mashed pulp.
Having eaten fresh aji limon pods before – and having read this sauce’s simple ingredient list – the sauce tasted pretty much like I expected it to taste. The only thing that provides a little bit of a twist is the cider vinegar. It gives the sauce that…apple cider…note. I’m not sure whether I would prefer straight-up distilled vinegar or not. Otherwise, the sauce tastes strongly of the chilies. It’s quite lemony and fairly sour. I’m amazed that there’s no salt in here – at least according to the label. If that’s true, then it’s certainly impressive and a testament to how much flavor the chilies have.
Pairing for this sauce isn’t rocket science: If a lemon squeeze would go well on the food, so would this sauce. But I will say that this sauce strikes me as a nice complement to a variety of battered-and-fried things.
It isn’t very hot. It’s easy to consume a large volume of this sauce.
Bottom line: At base, Cambridge Chilli Farm’s Lemon Drop Sauce is pretty straightforward: it tastes lemony. But it throws a bit of curveball by using cider vinegar, which gives it a noticeable apple note. The sauce has a kick, but it’s not particularly hot. It has a well-rounded flavor despite the fact that it has only three ingredients and contains no salt – a testament to how much flavor those aji limon chilies have. It also comes in a nice bottle. A solid product.
CHILIPHILE 