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Chili Sauce

A thick, spicy tomato-based sauce made with onions, peppers, spices, brown 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 the sauce

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

  2. In a large bowl, mix the chopped vegetables with salt, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and mace.

  3. Add the brown sugar, vinegar, and ginger, and mix thoroughly.

Cook and bottle

  1. Transfer the mixture to a granite kettle and cook until thick like ketchup, stirring often. Do not strain the sauce.

  2. Once thickened, pour it into 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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body and liquid that cooks down into a thick sauce.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the sauce thicken and darken as it cooks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps keep the sauce stable.
Onions
Add savory depth and body as they soften into the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring during the long cook. The sauce is thick and sugary, so it can scorch on the bottom of the kettle. Stirring often spreads heat evenly and keeps the texture smooth as it reduces.

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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