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Sauce

Hot Sauce for Meats

A sweet and spicy sauce made from onions, tomatoes, vinegar, peppers, sugar, salt, cinnamon, cloves, and red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Hot Sauce for Meats

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the onions and peppers.

Cook

  1. In a large pot, combine onions, sugar, tomatoes, vinegar, peppers, salt, cinnamon, cloves, and red pepper.

  2. Cook over medium heat until the mixture thickens.

Finish and bottle

  1. Strain the sauce to remove solids.

  2. Bottle the hot sauce and seal.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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 and its body as they break down during cooking.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and body as they soften and dissolve into the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps preserve the sauce.
Sugar
Balances the acidity and vinegar sharpness with sweetness and helps thicken the sauce.
Red pepper
Supplies the heat that gives the sauce its characteristic bite.

The step that matters

Cook over medium heat until the mixture thickens. Cooking long enough lets the water evaporate and the solids break down, so the sauce thickens. Heat that is too high can scorch the sugar and tomatoes on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the onion

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

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

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