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Chile Sauce

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Chile Sauce

Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Chile Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Finely chop the onions and green peppers.

  2. Cook the onions and peppers in a pot for about 2 hours.

  3. Add the tomatoes, sugar, vinegar, salt, ginger, spice, cloves, and nutmeg.

Thicken and bottle

  1. Boil gently, stirring until it thickens to a paste, about 1 hour or longer if still thin.

  2. Bottle the sauce tightly.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main bulk and moisture, which reduces to a thick paste as it simmers.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and body that softens and blends into the sauce during long cooking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and tomatoes.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its tang and sharp flavor.
Green peppers
Add a grassy, fresh bitterness and extra body to the cooked sauce.

The step that matters

Boil gently until it thickens to a paste. Thickening happens as water evaporates from the tomatoes and onions. Too little time leaves the sauce thin, and too vigorous a boil can scorch the sugar and sauce on the bottom of the pot, so stirring and a gentle simmer matter.

Swap the onion

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

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

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