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Chili Sauce

A tomato-based sauce with onions, peppers, sugar, salt, and vinegar, simmered until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Chili Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scald the tomatoes, peel them, and weigh them.

  2. In a porcelain-lined kettle, combine the tomatoes, onions, red peppers, brown sugar, salt, and vinegar.

Cook the sauce

  1. Boil the mixture slowly, stirring frequently to prevent burning.

  2. Once boiling, stir almost continuously until the sauce thickens to the consistency of apple sauce, about 30 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and let the sauce cool in the kettle.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the sauce and cork the bottles 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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 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

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the bulk and body of the sauce as they break down during boiling.
Onions
Add savory depth and body as they soften into the sauce.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its tang and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Stirring while the sauce thickens. Once the sauce is boiling, its sugars and solids can scorch on the bottom of the kettle. Stirring almost continuously keeps heat even and prevents burning, and it lets the sauce reduce evenly to the thick, apple-sauce consistency the recipe calls for.

Swap the onion

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

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

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