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Sauce

Hot Sauce for Meats

A spicy tomato-based sauce made with onions, sugar, vinegar, peppers, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Hot Sauce for Meats

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the onions and peppers.

Make the sauce

  1. In a large pot, combine onions, sugar, tomatoes, vinegar, peppers, salt, cinnamon, cloves, and red pepper.

  2. Cook over medium heat until the mixture thickens.

  3. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the hot sauce for later use.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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 body of the sauce, along with moisture and mild sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the vinegar and heat, and helps the sauce thicken as it cooks.
Vinegar
Brings acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the sauce.
Onions
Add savoury depth and body as they soften and break down during cooking.
Peppers
Supply the chilli heat and fresh pepper flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking until the mixture thickens. Cooking over medium heat reduces the water in the tomatoes and onions, concentrating flavour and giving body. Stopping too early leaves a thin sauce, while too high a heat can scorch the sugar and tomatoes on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the onion

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

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

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