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Chili Sauce

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Chili Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and chop the tomatoes.

  2. Skin and chop the onions.

  3. Remove seeds from green peppers and chop them.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the spices to the chopped vegetables.

  2. Cover with vinegar and boil until very thick.

  3. Just before removing from heat, add the celery seed.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the bulk and body of the sauce as they break down during cooking.
Onions
Add savoury depth and sweetness as they soften and release their sugars.
Cider vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the sauce and sharpens its flavour.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the acidity of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Boiling until very thick. Long boiling reduces the liquid and concentrates the sugars and acids, so the sauce thickens and keeps well. Stopping too early leaves it thin and more perishable.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, clove, nutmeg, ginger, cider, vinegar. 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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Tomato 14Green Tomato 4Raw 3Sweet 3 See all 392 →

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