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Sauce

Chile Sauce

A spicy sauce made by frying onion, adding red chile and flour, then thickening with boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Chile Sauce

Why it works: Onion and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 32,460 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chile Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the chopped onion in hot grease until done.

  2. Stir in the red chile and flour.

  3. Add boiling water gradually until you achieve a thick gravy.

  4. If omitting the onion, heat the grease, then stir in the flour and chile, and add water until smooth.

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. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Onion
Adds savory aroma and a mild sweetness as it cooks in the grease.
Red chile
Provides the main chile flavor and red color of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water gradually. Flour clumps when liquid is poured in all at once. Adding water slowly while stirring lets the starch disperse evenly, giving a smooth, thick gravy.

“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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