Skip to main content
Sauce

Chili Sauce

A tomato-based sauce with apples, onions, peppers, sugar, salt, and spices, simmered for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Chili Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the tomatoes, onions, and apples.

  2. Pour the vinegar over the chopped ingredients.

  3. Add the peppers, sugar, salt, and spices.

Cook

  1. If the tomatoes are too moist, drain some liquid before boiling.

  2. Boil for 4 to 5 hours.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

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

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

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

  5. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 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
Provide the main body and liquid that the sauce cooks down into.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the vinegar and apples.
Sour apples
Add natural acidity and pectin that help the sauce thicken as it cooks.
Onions
Add savoury depth and bulk to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the sauce and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Drain excess tomato liquid. Too much liquid prolongs cooking and can leave the sauce thin and watery. Removing some before the long boil helps it reduce to a thick consistency.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, sugar, apple, vinegar, ginger, cinnamon, pepper. 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

Ginger SauceGinger Sauce12 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes