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Chili Sauce

A tomato-based sauce with peppers, onion, sugar, vinegar, and spices, boiled and bottled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Chili Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the tomatoes, green peppers (or cayenne), onion, and sugar until thick.

  2. Add the vinegar and strain the mixture.

  3. Return the strained mixture to the heat.

  4. Add the salt, ginger, allspice, cloves, and cinnamon.

  5. Boil for 5 minutes.

Bottle

  1. Seal in glass bottles.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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, cooked down, provide its body and flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the vinegar and tomatoes.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and helps preserve it.
Onion
Adds savoury depth as it softens and cooks down into the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil until thick. The sauce thickens as water evaporates from the tomatoes and onion. Stopping too early leaves it thin, while overcooking can make it too dense and scorch sugars on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the onion

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

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

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