Skip to main content
Drink

Chilli Sauce

A tomato-based sauce simmered with onions, peppers, celery, salt, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tomato and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chilli Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the vegetables

  1. In a kettle, combine the chopped tomatoes, onions, green peppers, and celery.

  2. Add 1 pint of cold water and bring to a boil.

  3. Reduce heat and simmer slowly for 4 to 5 hours.

Season and finish

  1. Stir in the salt, vinegar, black pepper, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Continue to boil for 1 hour without stopping.

  3. Bottle the sauce while hot.

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 + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body and liquid base that cooks down into the sauce.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften during long simmering.
Green peppers
Contribute fresh, slightly bitter vegetable flavour that mellows with cooking.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps keep the sauce stable.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly for 4 to 5 hours. Long, gentle simmering evaporates water and concentrates the vegetables into a thick sauce. Boiling too hard can scorch the bottom of the kettle and burn the sugars, so the heat must stay low and the pot needs regular stirring.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, celery, 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.

More chili sauce recipes

Tomato 14Green Tomato 4Raw 3Sweet 3 See all 392 →

You might also like

Raspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesSugar VinegarSugar Vinegar20 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipes