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Sauce

Chili Sauce

A tomato-based sauce with onions, green peppers, vinegar, cloves, nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 tomatoes, onions, and green peppers very fine.

Cook and bottle

  1. Put all ingredients in a kettle and boil until thoroughly cooked.

  2. Add vinegar and spices, then stir gently.

  3. Boil for five minutes and then 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 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. Clove + allspicetop 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. Nutmeg + allspicetop 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
Provide the bulk and liquid that cook down into the sauce body.
Onions
Add savoury depth and body as they soften during boiling.
Green peppers
Contribute bright, slightly bitter vegetable flavour and texture to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the sauce.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Boil for five minutes and then bottle the sauce. Vinegar acidity and a sufficient boil help keep the sauce stable in storage. Stopping the boil too early can leave the vegetables under-cooked and the sauce less safely preserved.

Swap the onion

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

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

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