Name: Chili Sauce
Ingredients: 2 heaping teaspoons coarse sea salt; 1 heaping teaspoon ground cloves; 2 heaping teaspoons curry powder; 2 heaping teaspoons clinker; 15 large ripe tomatoes; 6 green bell peppers; 2 onions; 1 cup vinegar; 4 heaping tablespoons sugar

Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Chili Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Scald, peel, and chop the tomatoes finely.
Remove seeds from the peppers and chop them finely with the peeled onions.
Combine the chopped tomatoes, peppers, onions, sugar, vinegar, and salt in a pot.
Cook until the mixture thickens to the consistency of ketchup, stirring often to prevent burning.
Remove from heat and while hot, add ginger, cloves, and curry powder.
Bottle the sauce while hot and seal it airtight.

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.

Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,633 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Clove + tomatotop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,474 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the onion

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

Capsicumfits better
Mustardfits better
Cucumberfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, tomato, pepper, vinegar, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.