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Chili Sauce

A thick tomato-based sauce flavored with onions, sugar, vinegar, spices, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 and cook

  1. Chop the tomatoes and onions.

  2. Combine all ingredients except mustard in a large pot.

  3. Boil the mixture until it thickens.

  4. Stir in the mustard.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the sauce and seal.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 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, along with most of its moisture and tomato flavor.
Onions
Add savory depth and aroma that builds the base flavor of the sauce.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar and tomatoes.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it thickens. Sugar and tomato can scorch on the bottom of a pot, so stir often while it boils. Cooking long enough lets water evaporate and the sauce reach a thick, spoonable texture. Stopping too early leaves it thin.

Swap the onion

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

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

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