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Chili Sauce

A sweet and spiced tomato sauce made with red pepper, onion, sugar, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Chili Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and cut tomatoes into thin pieces.

  2. Peel the onion and chop it with the red pepper until very fine.

Cook the sauce

  1. Put all the ingredients together in a saucepan and cook until the vegetables are soft and the mixture is thick, stirring frequently.

Bottle and seal

  1. Pour the mixture into hot bottles, cork and seal.

  2. Cover the corks with paper.

  3. Invert the bottle in liquid sealing wax, then turn constantly until the wax sets.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Red pepper
Adds bulk and mild, fresh sweetness as it softens into the sauce.
Onion
Softens while cooking to give the sauce body and a savoury base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the tomatoes.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and flavour to the sauce.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the sauce.
Allspice
Adds aromatic, warm spice flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking until thick. The sauce thickens as water evaporates and the vegetables break down. Stirring often keeps the bottom from scorching and ensures even thickening before the sauce is bottled.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, 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.

More chili sauce recipes

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

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