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Chili Sauce

A tomato-based sauce with peppers, spices, and vinegar, simmered for an hour and bottled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Chili Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Scald, peel, and drain the tomatoes, onions, and peppers.

  2. Pass them through a meat chopper, saving all juices.

Cook the sauce

  1. Heat the mixture thoroughly in a large pan.

  2. Lower the heat.

  3. Add the spices, sugar, and salt, and boil gently while stirring almost constantly for one hour.

  4. Add the vinegar and boil for an additional 5 minutes.

Bottle

  1. Fill large mouth bottles or small fruit jars.

  2. Cover tightly.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 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

Ripe tomatoes
Form the bulk of the sauce and provide its main body and liquid.
Onions
Add savoury depth and body as they soften during the long simmer.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the vinegar and adds sweetness.
Apple cider vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its tang and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Boiling gently while stirring almost constantly. The sauce is thick and sugary, so it can scorch on the bottom of the pan. Frequent stirring at a gentle boil spreads the heat evenly and keeps the spices and sugar from burning during the long hour of cooking.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, nutmeg, clove, pepper, allspice, ginger, sugar. 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.

More chili sauce recipes

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

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