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Chili Sauce

A thick tomato-based sauce with onions, peppers, spices, sugar, vinegar, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

  1. Chop the tomatoes, onions, and red peppers finely.

  2. Add salt, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and mace to the chopped mixture and mix thoroughly.

Cook and store

  1. Stir in brown sugar, vinegar, and ginger.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a granite kettle and cook until thick like ketchup, stirring often.

  3. Do not strain. Store in tightly corked bottles or jars.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 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

Ripe tomatoes
Form the bulk of the sauce and break down into a thick, pulpy base as they cook.
Onions
Add body and savory sweetness that deepen as the sauce cooks down.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the finished sauce its dark color and rich flavor.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and helps the sauce keep well.

The step that matters

Cook until thick like ketchup. Tomatoes and onions release a lot of water, and the sauce only thickens as that water evaporates. Stirring often keeps the bottom from scorching as sugars concentrate.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, cinnamon, clove, allspice, mace, sugar. 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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Tomato 14Green Tomato 4Raw 3Sweet 3 See all 392 →

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