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Chili Sauce

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chili Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the tomatoes, onions, and green peppers finely.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pot, combine the chopped vegetables with brown sugar, vinegar, mustard seed, celery seed, salt, cloves, and cinnamon.

  2. Cook the mixture over medium heat until it thickens.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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 bulk and body of the sauce as they break down during cooking.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its tang and helps preserve it.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar and tomatoes.
Onions
Add savory depth and aroma as they soften into the sauce.
Green peppers
Add fresh, slightly bitter vegetable flavor and some body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook until it thickens. Cooking drives off water and lets the chopped vegetables break down and reduce, so the sauce sets to the right consistency. Stopping too early leaves it thin, while overcooking can scorch the sugar on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, sugar, vinegar, mustard, celery, 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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Tomato 14Green Tomato 4Raw 3Sweet 3 See all 392 →

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