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Sauce

Chilli Sauce

A tomato-based sauce with onions, peppers, vinegar, cinnamon, and salt, simmered for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Chilli Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Run the sliced tomatoes through a colander.

  2. Cook the tomatoes for 1 hour.

  3. Add the chopped onions, red peppers, vinegar, cinnamon, and salt.

  4. Boil the mixture vigorously for another hour.

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

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

  2. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Tomato + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,348 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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
Form the bulk of the sauce, providing moisture, body and acidity as they cook down.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften during cooking.
Red peppers
Contribute sweetness, color and a fresh vegetal flavor to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the flavor and helps preserve the sauce.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aromatic spice that rounds out the sauce's flavor.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture vigorously for another hour. A vigorous boil for a full hour reduces the liquid and concentrates flavors. Too gentle a simmer leaves the sauce thin and watery, while the long cook drives off excess moisture and helps the sauce thicken.

Swap the cinnamon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, onion, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Cinnamonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, pepper, 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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