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Sauce

Cold Chili Sauce

A tomato-based sauce with onions, green peppers, vinegar, brown sugar, sea salt, and mustard seed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cold Chili Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

  2. Add the coarse sea salt and let the mixture drain overnight.

Make the sauce

  1. After draining, add the vinegar, brown sugar, and mustard seed.

  2. Pour the mixture into bottles.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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

Firm ripe tomatoes
Provide the bulk and body of the sauce.
Onions
Add savory flavor and pungent bite to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps preserve the sauce.
Light brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the vinegar's sharpness.
White mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, pungent flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Draining overnight after salting. Salt draws water out of the chopped vegetables through osmosis. Draining removes that liquid, so the sauce won't be watery and thin once the vinegar and sugar are added.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, vinegar, sugar, mustard. 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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