Condiments are where additives hide in plain sight. Nobody reads the back of a mustard jar, and a teaspoon of something feels too small to matter. Yet in the records we pulled, roughly half the UK mustards and four in five UK pestos listed at least one additive — and the jars that manage without are not always the obvious ones.
Every product below lists no additives. All were pulled from Open Food Facts records for UK products, the ingredient list of each one was read by hand, and every barcode was checked against the live Cull database. Pasta sauces have their own list, so none of those appear here.
UK sauces and condiments with no additives
Ingredient lists checked 22 October 2026 against Open Food Facts and the live Cull database. We do not print a score here: scores move when our scoring changes, not only when a recipe does, so a number typed into this page would go stale without anything about the food changing. Follow any row to see what Cull scores it today. Recipes change without notice and supermarket own-brands are reformulated regularly — scan the pack in front of you rather than trusting any list, including this one. Scores are Cull's own standard, not an official rating.
What counted as an additive
Anything with an E number, and anything named by its additive class — preservative, acidity regulator, stabiliser, thickener, emulsifier, colour. Modified starch, citric acid, xanthan gum and potassium sorbate all ruled a jar out, as did any sulphite.
We went one step further than the law on flavour. Flavourings were excluded, as in every earlier list in this series, and so were “spice and herb extracts” and smoked water. Neither is an E number, and many people would let them through. Both do a flavouring's job, so we treated them as one. That is why Heinz's standard ketchup, which lists spice and herb extracts, is not here — and why its organic ketchup, which uses spices, onion powder and garlic powder instead, is.
Two things that look like additives passed. Plain maize and potato starch are ingredients, the same as cornflour in a gravy; modified starch is a different, industrially altered product, and it is the one NOVA counts. Concentrated lemon juice is lemon juice, not citric acid.
Mustard is where the sulphites are
We pulled every UK mustard that Open Food Facts places in NOVA groups 1 to 3 — 33 of them. Sixteen listed at least one additive. Eight listed a sulphite, usually E223 or E224, and nine listed citric acid. The supermarket Dijons were the most consistent offenders. The two mustards on this list are a wholegrain and an English, and both read like something you could make at home: mustard seed or ground mustard, water, vinegar or lemon juice, salt, a spice.
Sulphites are one of the 14 allergens UK law requires labels to emphasise, once they pass 10 mg per kilo. If you react to them, note that wine vinegar can carry small amounts below that threshold, which do not have to be declared. Neither mustard here declares a sulphite, but the maker is the one to ask if it matters to you.
Pesto is the hard shelf
Pesto was the hardest shelf on the list. Of 47 UK pestos in the same NOVA 1 to 3 pull, 38 listed an additive, and 25 of those listed lactic acid (E270), an acidity regulator that helps a jar keep at room temperature. Mayonnaise was closer to an even split: 15 of 35 carried one, most often calcium disodium EDTA (E385) or potassium sorbate (E202).
None of that makes those jars ultra-processed on its own. Under NOVA, preservatives and acids alone usually leave a food in group 3; it is flavourings, emulsifiers, colours and modified starches that mark group 4. So “additive-free” and “not ultra-processed” are two different claims, and plenty of jars meet the second without the first. Our additives guide sets out which classes count as markers and which do not.
Additive-free is not a health claim
Scores on this list run from 12 to 58. Both mayonnaises score 12: they are around 80% oil, which is what mayonnaise is. Both soy sauces score 12 too — soy sauce is very salty, and that is the point of it. The highest scorer is the brown sauce from Tesco's budget range.
That is the corrective this series keeps having to make. A short ingredient list says a jar was made from recognisable things. It says nothing about the sugar, salt or fat in it, which is what the score is for. Condiments add a further wrinkle: you eat them by the teaspoon, and labels describe them per 100g, which is far more than anyone uses. Our guide to per 100g versus per portion explains how to read both.
What we left out
Plenty of bottles passed an additive count of zero and still did not make the list. Ketchups and Worcester sauces listing spice, herb, onion or tamarind extracts were left out under the extracts rule above. Barbecue sauces made with hickory smoked water went the same way. One sriracha thickened with konjac root, which does a gum's job, was dropped. A one-litre soy sauce record listed milk as an allergen with no milk in its ingredients, so we did not trust it. Records with no UK listing, or with an ingredient list that was cut off or in another language, were excluded rather than guessed at.
The same caveat applies here as everywhere: own-brand recipes change without notice. Scan the jar in front of you rather than trusting any list, including this one.