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Chili Sauce

A tomato-based sauce with peppers, onions, vinegar, sugar, and spices, simmered until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,331 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Chili Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch and peel the tomatoes, then chop them with the red bull's eye peppers and green bull's eye peppers and onions.

  2. Put the chopped ingredients into an enameled preserving kettle.

Cook and seal

  1. Add vinegar, brown sugar, salt, allspice, ginger, and nutmeg.

  2. Bring to a boil, stirring frequently, and boil until the sauce thickens, about one hour.

  3. Seal the sauce while hot in Perfect Seal Jars.

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. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the sauce and provide moisture and body as they cook down.
Onions
Add savoury depth and body as they soften into the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the sauce.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the vinegar's sharpness.

The step that matters

Boil until the sauce thickens. Stirring frequently while it boils keeps the sugar and solids from scorching on the bottom of the kettle. The sauce thickens as water evaporates, so stopping too early leaves it thin, while overcooking makes it too stiff.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, vinegar, sugar, allspice, ginger, nutmeg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, vinegar, sugar, allspice, ginger, nutmeg. 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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