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Sauce

Chili Sauce

A spicy sauce made from tomatoes, peppers, onions, celery, vinegar, horseradish, sugar, salt, ginger, cloves, allspice, mace, and red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chili Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the celery, peppers, onions, and tomatoes.

Cook

  1. Tie the spices in a bag and boil them together with the chopped vegetables and vinegar for 30 minutes.

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. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Celery + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together835 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 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

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the sauce and give it body and fresh tomato flavor.
Onions
Add savory depth and body as they soften during cooking.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps keep the sauce stable.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Horseradish
Contributes a sharp, pungent heat that gives the sauce its bite.
Green peppers
Add a fresh, slightly bitter vegetable flavor and extra body.

The step that matters

Boil for the full 30 minutes. Boiling the chopped vegetables with the vinegar and spices for the full time lets the vegetables soften and the spice flavors spread through the sauce. Stopping early can leave the sauce tasting raw and sharp.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, onion, celery, vinegar, horseradish, sugar, ginger):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, celery, vinegar, horseradish, sugar, ginger. 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.

More chili sauce recipes

Tomato 14Green Tomato 4Raw 3Sweet 3 See all 392 →

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