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Sauce

Chilli Sauce

A homemade 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 ↓

Chilli Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the tomatoes, onions, and peppers.

  2. In a large pot, combine all ingredients.

Cook and jar

  1. Boil the mixture well.

  2. Seal the sauce in jars 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 main body, moisture and tomato flavor that the sauce is built on.
Onions
Add savory aroma and sweetness as they soften and cook down into the sauce.
Peppers
Contribute vegetable flavor and bulk, softening as the sauce simmers.
Vinegar
Adds acidity, sharpening the flavor and helping keep the sauce stable for storage.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and tomatoes.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor that defines the sauce's character.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture well. Thorough boiling softens the vegetables and drives off water, so the sauce thickens and concentrates its flavor. Undercooked sauce stays thin and watery, and its acidity may not be evenly distributed for safe storage.

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

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