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Chili Sauce

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Chili Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the vegetables.

  2. Add the other ingredients and cook until tender.

  3. Add the vinegar, boil for five minutes, and seal.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

Ripe tomatoes
Break down as they cook, supplying most of the liquid and body of the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps keep the sauce stable.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and the spices.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding savoury depth and body.
Green sweet peppers
Soften during cooking, adding mild vegetable flavour and bulk.

The step that matters

Boiling after adding the vinegar. The vinegar needs to boil with the sauce for the full time so its sharp flavour mellows and blends into the spices. Sealing before the boil is complete leaves the sauce less stable and more likely to spoil.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, ginger, pepper, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, 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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Tomato 14Green Tomato 4Raw 3Sweet 3 See all 392 →

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