Skip to main content
Main

Chili Sauce

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chili Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Remove seeds from the tomatoes and cut them in half.

  2. Cook the tomatoes until soft, then strain through a colander and measure the liquid.

Make the sauce

  1. In a large pot, combine the measured tomatoes with the chopped sweet and sharp peppers, onions, vinegar, sugar, salt, celery seed, mustard seed, cinnamon, and grated nutmeg.

  2. Cook the mixture over medium heat until it thickens.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body and liquid that becomes the sauce base.
Onions
Add savory depth and bulk as they soften into the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its tang and helps preserve it.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the vinegar and sharp peppers.
Sweet peppers
Contribute body, mild sweetness and vegetable flavor to the sauce.
Sharp peppers
Add heat and pungency that give the sauce its character.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture over medium heat until it thickens. Cooking drives off water and concentrates the sugars and solids, so the sauce thickens. Heat that is too high can scorch the sugars and sugary sauces stick to the pot, so stirring and moderate heat matter.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, vinegar, sugar, celery, mustard, cinnamon. 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.

More chili sauce recipes

Tomato 14Green Tomato 4Raw 3Sweet 3 See all 392 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes