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Chili Sauce

A tomato-based sauce with peppers, onions, vinegar, spices, and Worcestershire sauce simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Chili Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the tomatoes, green peppers, and onions.

Cook

  1. In a large pot, combine all ingredients: tomatoes, peppers, onions, vinegar, salt, brown sugar, ginger, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, and Worcestershire sauce.

  2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 4 hours, stirring occasionally.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 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 + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the sauce and its body and fruity acidity as they cook down.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth that builds as they soften during long simmering.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and helps preserve it.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the acidity of the vinegar and tomatoes.

The step that matters

Simmering for 4 hours. A long, gentle simmer with occasional stirring lets the sauce thicken and evaporate excess water while the spices blend. Heating too hard can scorch the bottom of the pot, so keep the heat low enough for a steady simmer.

Swap the onion

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

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

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