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Sauce

Chili Sauce

A tomato-based sauce with peppers, onion, vinegar, sugar, salt, ginger, allspice, and cloves, steamed for an hour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Chili Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the onion finely.

  2. In a large pot, combine the tomatoes, green peppers, chopped onion, vinegar, sugar, and salt.

Steam and season

  1. Steam the mixture for 1 hour.

  2. After steaming, add the ginger, allspice, and cloves.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 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
Form the bulk of the sauce and provide body, moisture and fruity base flavor.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its tang and helps it keep.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and tomatoes.
Green peppers
Contribute vegetal, slightly bitter flavor and texture to the sauce.
Onion
Builds savory depth as it softens during steaming.

The step that matters

Adding the ginger, allspice and cloves after steaming. Aromatic spice compounds are volatile and fade with long exposure to heat. Adding them once the steaming is done helps keep their fragrance and flavor noticeable in the finished sauce.

Swap the onion

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

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

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