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Sauce

Chili Sauce, II

A tomato-based chili sauce with onions, peppers, vinegar, sugar, spices, and celery seed, boiled until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Chili Sauce, II

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and chop the tomatoes very fine.

  2. Chop the onions and green peppers.

Cook and store

  1. Combine all ingredients in a large pot.

  2. Boil until thick, stirring frequently.

  3. Let cool and store in bottles, sealing 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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 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
Provide the bulk and body of the sauce, breaking down as they cook.
Onions
Add savory depth and sweetness that mellows during long cooking.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its tang and helps preserve it.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar and tomatoes.

The step that matters

Boil until thick, stirring frequently. Tomatoes and onions are full of water and sugars that can scorch on the bottom of the pot. Frequent stirring prevents burning and lets the sauce reduce evenly to a thick consistency.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, vinegar, sugar, clove, cinnamon, 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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