Standard Gröbner basis methods are often too inefficient to handle even small cases arising in areas such as computational complexity theory – for instance, the orbit closure of the $3 \times 3$ determinant in geometric complexity theory. Motivated by this, and better understanding the bideterminant (=product of minors) basis on the polynomial ring in $n \times m$ variables, we develop theory and algorithms for Gröbner bases in not only algebras with straightening law (ASLs or Hodge algebras), but in any commutative algebra over a field that comes equipped with a notion of “monomial” (generalizing the standard monomials of ASLs) and a suitable term order. Rather than treating such an algebra $A$ as a quotient of a polynomial ring and then “lifting” ideals from $A$ to ideals in the polynomial ring, the theory we develop is entirely “native” to $A$ and its given notion of monomial.

When applied to the case of bideterminants, this enables us to package several standard results on bideterminants in a clean way that enables new results. In particular, once the theory is set up, it lets us give an almost-trivial proof of a universal Gröbner basis (in our sense) for the ideal of $t$-minors for any $t$. We note that here it was crucial that theory be native to $A$ and its given monomial structure, as in the standard monomial structure given by bideterminants each $t$-minor is a single variable rather than a sum of $t!$ many terms (in the “ordinary monomial” structure).