Name: Picante Sauce
Ingredients: 2 cups canned tomatoes with juice; 1 small onion; 2 to 4 fresh peppers of your choice; Pinch of sugar; Salt to taste

Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and 17,923 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Picante Sauce

Time30 minutes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

Place all ingredients in a blender or food processor and blend until finely chopped.
Pour into a saucepan and bring to a boil.
Lower heat and simmer for 30 minutes.

Store

Cool slightly, pour into a pint jar, seal and refrigerate.
The sauce will keep three to four weeks in the refrigerator.

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.

Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together20,633 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + sugartop 32% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together19,401 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Tomato + sugartop 33% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together4,667 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Pepper and sugar share little aroma chemistry, yet 19,401 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Canned tomatoes: Provide the main body, moisture and tomato flavour of the sauce.
Fresh peppers: Add heat and fresh pepper flavour to the sauce.
Onion: Adds savoury, aromatic depth to the sauce.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

Capsicumbetter flavor fit
Carrotbetter flavor fit
Okrabetter flavor fit
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, sugar. 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.