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Chili Sauce

A tomato-based sauce with peppers, onions, spices, and vinegar, boiled and bottled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Chili Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut up the tomatoes and boil until soft.

  2. Run the tomatoes through a colander to remove the skins.

  3. Finely chop the peppers and onions, then add them to the pot.

Cook and bottle

  1. Stir in the salt, sugar, ginger, cloves, cinnamon, allspice, and vinegar.

  2. Boil the mixture until it thickens.

  3. Bottle the sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 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

Ripe tomatoes
Form the bulk of the sauce, breaking down into a soft base once boiled.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar and tomatoes.
Onions
Add savoury body and aroma as they soften into the sauce.
Peppers
Add heat and fresh, vegetal flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it thickens. Tomatoes and vinegar thicken as water evaporates during a long boil. Stopping too early leaves a thin sauce that may spoil sooner in the bottle.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, sugar, ginger, clove, 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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Tomato 14Green Tomato 4Raw 3Sweet 3 See all 392 →

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