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Chilli Sauce

A tomato-based sauce simmered with onions, peppers, celery, water, vinegar, salt, black pepper, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chilli Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin and coarsely chop the tomatoes and place them in a kettle.

  2. Chop the onions, green peppers, and celery, and add them to the kettle.

Cook

  1. Add 1 pint of cold water and boil slowly for 4 to 5 hours.

  2. Stir in the coarse sea salt, cold vinegar, black pepper, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Boil everything together for 1 hour without stopping.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the sauce while hot.

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

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

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

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

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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
Form the bulk of the sauce and provide its main body and flavor.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften during long simmering.
Green peppers
Contribute vegetal flavor and some body to the cooked sauce.
Celery
Adds a savory, herbal background flavor as it cooks down.
Cold vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and helps keep it stable.

The step that matters

Long slow boil. Hours of gentle simmering reduce the water and concentrate the tomatoes and vegetables into a thick sauce. Boiling too hard can scorch the bottom of the kettle, so stir regularly and keep the heat controlled.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, celery, 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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