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Chili Sauce

A tomato-based sauce with peppers, onions, mustard seed, salt, sugar, and vinegar, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Chili Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stew the tomatoes and run them through a colander.

  2. Chop the green peppers and onions finely.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the tomatoes, green peppers, onions, mustard seed, coarse sea salt, and brown sugar in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture for 2.5 hours over low heat.

  3. Add the vinegar and boil for an additional 30 minutes.

  4. Seal the sauce in bottles.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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
Form the bulk of the sauce, providing body, moisture and most of its flavor.
Green peppers
Add vegetal bite and aroma that gives the sauce its character.
Onions
Contribute savory depth and sweetness as they soften during the long boil.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the acidity of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens flavor and helps preserve the sauce.

The step that matters

Add the vinegar. Vinegar is added only after the long simmer. Adding it too early can dull the vegetables' flavor and change the sauce's final balance of acidity and sweetness.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, onion, mustard, sugar, vinegar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, mustard, sugar, 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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