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Chili Sauce

A tomato-based sauce with vinegar, onion, red pepper, spices, and sugar, cooked until thick and bottled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 the tomatoes into thin pieces.

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

Cook

  1. Put all the ingredients 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 and invert the bottles 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

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the sauce and supply moisture and body as they break down.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its tang and helps preserve it.
Sugar
Balances the acidity and sharpness of the vinegar and peppers with sweetness.
Onion
Adds savory depth and aromatic flavor to the sauce base.
Red pepper
Adds sweetness, color, and mild heat to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking until thick. The sauce must cook long enough for the vegetables to soften and excess liquid to evaporate. Stirring frequently prevents sticking and scorching on the bottom of the pan, since sugar caramelizes and burns easily at the heat needed to thicken.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, 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.

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

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