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Chili Sauce

A tomato-based sauce with spices, vinegar, and sweetener, simmered until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chili Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the tomatoes in a large pot for one hour.

  2. Add the salt, vinegar, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, mustard seed, horseradish, onion, celery seed, brown sugar, and red peppers, then stir all ingredients together on the stove.

  3. Simmer for an additional time until well combined and heated through.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 provide its main body and moisture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its tang and helps preserve it.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity and spice.
Horseradish
Contributes a sharp, pungent bite to the sauce.
Onion
Adds savory depth and body as it softens during cooking.
Red peppers
Add sweetness, colour and a mild heat to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer until well combined and heated through. Simmering long enough lets the raw vegetables soften and the spices and acid blend into one sauce. Stopping early can leave it harsh and uneven, while the sauce thickens as moisture evaporates.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, clove, allspice, cinnamon, mustard, horseradish, onion):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, clove, allspice, cinnamon, mustard, horseradish, onion. 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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