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Sauce

Bajak Chili Sauce

A spicy chili sauce made with chilies, shrimp paste, nutmeg, garlic, shallots, salt, palm sugar, oil, salam leaves, lemongrass, galangal, and tamarind juice.

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and tamarind share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and 19 recipes mention both. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grind the chilies, shrimp paste, nutmeg, garlic, shallots, salt, and palm sugar very finely.

Cook

  1. Heat the oil over medium-high heat.

  2. Sauté the ground ingredients along with the salam leaves, lemongrass, and galangal.

  3. Stir frequently until the mixture changes color and becomes fragrant.

  4. Pour in the tamarind juice, simmer for about a minute, then let cool.

  5. Remove the salam leaves, lemongrass, and galangal before serving.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Nutmeg + tamarindtop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together19 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Shrimp + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,546 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  3. Garlic + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,949 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Shrimp + tamarindtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together65 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Sugar + tamarindtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together362 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Red chilies
Provide the main heat and bulk of the sauce's flavor.
Shallots
Add sweetness and aromatic depth when sautéed.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that mellows and sweetens as it cooks.
Tamarind juice
Contributes sourness that balances the sweetness and heat.
Palm sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the heat and sourness.

The step that matters

Sauté until fragrant. Cooking the ground paste in oil until it changes color and smells fragrant drives off raw, harsh notes and deepens flavor. Stopping too early leaves the sauce tasting raw, while over-browning can make it bitter.

Flavor stand-ins for the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shrimp, garlic, shallot, sugar, tamarind):

  1. Gingerbetter flavor fit
  2. Cuminbetter flavor fit
  3. Corianderbetter flavor fit
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, garlic, shallot, sugar, tamarind. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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