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Chili Sauce

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Chili Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scald and peel the tomatoes, then chop them.

  2. Chop the red and green bullnose peppers and onions.

Cook and seal

  1. In an enameled saucepan, combine the chopped ingredients with vinegar, brown sugar, salt, allspice, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg.

  2. Cook until the sauce thickens and the onions are tender, about 1 hour.

  3. Remove from heat and pour the chili sauce into jars while hot, sealing them well.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 and bulk of the sauce as they cook down.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the sauce.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and depth, balancing the vinegar's sharpness.
Onions
Soften during cooking, adding body and savoury sweetness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook until the sauce thickens. Cooking long enough lets water evaporate and the tomatoes and onions break down, which sets the sauce's thickness. Stopping early leaves it thin and more likely to spoil in storage.

Swap the onion

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

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

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