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Chili Sauce

A homemade tomato-based sauce with peppers, onions, spices, sugar, mustard seed, and vinegar, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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. Chop the tomatoes, green peppers, and onions.

Cook the sauce

  1. In a large pot, combine the chopped vegetables, brown sugar, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, and mustard seed.

  2. Boil the mixture for 1 to 2 hours.

  3. Add the vinegar and boil for an additional 1 to 2 hours.

  4. Bottle the sauce and seal it.

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 a thick, moist base.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the sauce as it reduces.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the sauce.
White mustard seed
Contributes pungent flavor that mellows during long simmering.

The step that matters

Adding the vinegar and simmering. Vinegar is added only after the vegetables have cooked down, so its acidity is not diluted by early liquid. Extended boiling then concentrates the sauce and thickens it, which is essential for a stable, shelf-ready result.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, sugar, clove, allspice, cinnamon, mustard. 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.

More chili sauce recipes

Tomato 14Green Tomato 4Raw 3Sweet 3 See all 392 →

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