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Sauce

Old English Chile Sauce

A tomato-based sauce with onions, peppers, spices, and vinegar, boiled for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Old English Chile Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the skins from the tomatoes.

  2. Chop the tomatoes, onion, and peppers together.

Cook and jar

  1. Add salt, sugar, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, and vinegar.

  2. Boil for 2 hours.

  3. Put the sauce in 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. Clove + cinnamontop 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. Allspice + cinnamontop 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 moisture of the sauce as they break down during boiling.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its tang and helps preserve it.
Sugar
Balances the acidity and sharpness of the vinegar and tomatoes with sweetness.
Salt
Seasons the sauce and draws out flavour from the vegetables.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and body to the sauce as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Boil for 2 hours. A long, steady boil lets the tomatoes and onion break down and the liquid reduce to a thick sauce. Too short a boil leaves it thin and watery, and the spices and vinegar stay sharp rather than blending.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, sugar, clove, allspice, cinnamon, 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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