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Spanish Sauce

A tomato-based sauce with onions, peppers, celery, spices, sugar, vinegar, and salt, simmered for one hour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Spanish Sauce

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 ↓

Spanish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Peel the green tomatoes, onions, and sweet peppers.

  2. Chop the peeled green tomatoes, onions, and sweet peppers.

  3. Soak the chopped vegetables in salt water overnight.

  4. Drain the vegetables in a muslin bag.

  5. Scald the ripe tomatoes.

  6. Peel the scalded tomatoes.

  7. Chop the peeled tomatoes finely.

  8. Drain the chopped tomatoes in a colander.

  9. Chop the celery.

Cook

  1. Combine all ingredients in a pot.

  2. Cook the mixture for one hour.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the sauce and its tart, fresh-vegetable base.
Onions
Add savory body and sweetness that deepens as the sauce cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the sauce and sharpens its flavour.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavour.

The step that matters

Soaking the chopped vegetables in salt water overnight. Salt draws water out of the chopped vegetables by osmosis, so they lose moisture before cooking. Draining them well keeps the finished sauce thick rather than watery.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, pepper, celery, cinnamon, clove, allspice. 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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