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Chili Sauce

A tomato-based sauce with peppers, onions, sugar, vinegar, and spices, boiled for hours and bottled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the tomatoes.

  2. Chop the red peppers and onions.

Cook

  1. In a saucepan, combine the tomatoes, peppers, onions, brown sugar, vinegar, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, mace, and salt.

  2. Boil gently for 3 hours, stirring frequently to prevent burning.

Bottle

  1. Cool the sauce and seal it in wide-mouthed 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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 break down into its body and moisture.
Red peppers
Add vegetable body and a mild pepper flavor to the sauce.
Onions
Add savory depth and aromatic flavor as they soften during cooking.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity for a tangy flavor and helps preserve the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil gently while stirring frequently. Sugar and tomato solids scorch easily on the bottom of a pan over long cooking. Frequent stirring keeps them from sticking and burning, which would give the sauce a bitter, burnt taste.

Swap the onion

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

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

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