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Sauce

Chili Pepper Sauce

A tomato and pepper sauce seasoned with vinegar, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Chili Pepper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine tomatoes, green peppers, and onions in a pot.

  2. Add vinegar, sugar, salt, mace, nutmeg, cloves, and celery seed.

  3. Boil for 1 hour.

  4. Bottle the sauce while hot.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body and moisture that cook down into the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps preserve the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar and tomatoes.
Onions
Contribute savory flavor and body as they soften during the long boil.

The step that matters

Boil for 1 hour. The sauce must simmer long enough for the vegetables to soften and the liquid to reduce and thicken. Too short a boil leaves a thin, raw-tasting sauce and weakens the acidity needed for keeping it stable.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, wine, sugar, mace, nutmeg, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, wine, sugar, mace, nutmeg, 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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