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Sauce

Chilli Sauce

A spicy tomato-based sauce made with peppers, onions, and spices, simmered with vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove 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 ↓

Chilli Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cook the tomatoes, peppers, and onions until thoroughly soft.

  2. Add the salt, sugar, allspice, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, and vinegar, then stir well and simmer for a few minutes to combine the flavors.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 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

Tomatoes
Break down into the sauce base, providing body, moisture, and bulk.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding savory depth to the sauce.
Red peppers
Soften and add sweetness and vegetable body to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps keep the sauce tangy.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar and tomatoes.

The step that matters

Cook the tomatoes, peppers, and onions until thoroughly soft. Vegetables that stay firm will leave a chunky, uneven texture. Cooking them fully softens their cell walls so they break down into a smooth, cohesive sauce.

Swap the onion

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

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

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