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Chelee Sauce

A tomato-based sauce with onions, peppers, vinegar, sugar, salt, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Chelee Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the tomatoes, onions, and peppers.

  2. Combine all ingredients in a large pot.

  3. Boil the mixture well.

  4. Seal the sauce while hot.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 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
Provide the bulk of the sauce, with moisture and acidity that give it body when cooked down.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps preserve the sauce.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes and vinegar with sweetness.
Onions
Add savoury depth and soften into the sauce as it boils.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture well. The sauce needs enough sustained boiling to cook the vegetables fully and reduce excess water, which sets the texture. Sealing while hot relies on this heat to help preserve it.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, allspice, 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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