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Raw Chili Sauce

A raw sauce made from tomatoes, peppers, onions, celery, nasturtium seed, mustard seed, brown sugar, vinegar, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Raw Chili Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the tomatoes, green peppers, white onions, celery, and nasturtium seed finely.

  2. Add the white mustard seed, brown sugar, vinegar, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Salt the mixture and drain overnight.

Finish and bottle

  1. Toss everything together and bottle it without cooking.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body and liquid base of the sauce.
White onions
Add sharp, savoury bulk that mellows during the overnight rest.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the sauce and gives it its tang.
White mustard seed
Adds pungent heat and a bit of texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Salt the mixture and drain overnight. Salt draws water out of chopped vegetables through osmosis. Draining afterward removes that liquid, so the sauce stays thick rather than watery once bottled raw.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, celery, mustard, sugar, vinegar. 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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