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Chili Sauce

A tomato-based sauce with onions, peppers, spices, vinegar, and sugar, cooked and bottled hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Chili Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the onions and peppers very fine.

Cook and bottle

  1. Cook the tomatoes for about 45 minutes.

  2. Add the rest of the ingredients and cook for about 30 minutes.

  3. Mix thoroughly and bottle 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 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 its liquid body and fruity flavor.
Onions
Add savory depth and body as they soften during cooking.
Peppers
Contribute pepper flavor and body to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the sauce and helps keep it stable.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes that give the sauce its characteristic flavor.

The step that matters

Bottle while hot. Filling the bottles while the sauce is still hot drives air out of the containers and helps the lids seal as they cool. Keeping the sauce hot until it is bottled also reduces the chance of it cooling into a range where unwanted microbes can grow.

Swap the onion

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

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

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