Name: Chili Sauce.— for Cold Meats
Ingredients: 27 ripe tomatoes; 5 green peppers; 3 onions; 1 ½ cups vinegar; ¼ cup sugar; 3 tablespoons salt; ¼ teaspoon cloves; ¼ teaspoon cinnamon; ¼ teaspoon allspice

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.— for Cold Meats

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Chop the tomatoes, green peppers, and onions.

Cook

Combine all ingredients in a pot.
Cook over medium heat for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

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.

Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
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 main body, moisture and acidity that form the sauce.
Green peppers: Add vegetable bulk and a sharp, grassy flavor to the sauce.
Onions: Add savory depth and aroma as they soften during cooking.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and helps preserve it.
Sugar: Balances the acidity of the vinegar and tomatoes with sweetness.

Swap the onion

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

Capsicumfits better
Mustardfits better
Carrotfits better
Onionthe original

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