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Chili Sauce

A tomato-based sauce with peppers, spices, and vinegar, boiled and bottled.

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 ↓

Chili Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the tomatoes, green peppers (or cayenne pepper), onion, and sugar together until thick.

  2. Add the vinegar and strain the mixture.

  3. Return the strained mixture to the heat and add salt, ginger, allspice, cloves, and cinnamon.

  4. Boil for 5 minutes, then remove from heat and seal in glass bottles.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 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

Ripe tomatoes
Form the bulk of the sauce and break down into a thick, sauce-like body when boiled.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the sauce as it reduces.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps preserve the sauce.
Green peppers
Add fresh, vegetal bite; cayenne can replace them for heat.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and body to the sauce as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Boil the strained mixture with the spices and seal while hot. Vinegar and sugar only preserve the sauce well when it is boiled to a sufficient temperature and sealed hot. Boiling also drives off raw spice notes and blends the flavours, so a short or lukewarm boil risks spoilage and a flat taste.

Swap the onion

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

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

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