Skip to main content
Sauce

Chile Sauce

A spicy sauce made from roasted red peppers, onion, garlic, oregano, and sea salt.

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

Why it works: Oregano and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 166 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Chile Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peppers

  1. Remove seeds and veins from the red peppers.

  2. Scald the peppers in boiling water until soft.

Make the sauce

  1. Mash the peppers with a potato masher or in a mortar.

  2. Press the mashed peppers through a colander.

  3. Add salt, chopped onion, minced garlic, and oregano.

  4. Adjust consistency to that of cream.

  5. For a spicier sauce, leave some veins in the peppers.

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. Oregano + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together166 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Clove + marjoramtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Garlic + oreganotop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,756 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Red peppers
Form the bulk of the sauce and supply its main flavour and body once mashed.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aromatic depth as the sauce cooks through.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma that mellows and deepens the overall flavour.

The step that matters

Adjust consistency to that of cream. Pressing through a colander removes most of the pulp, so the sauce can be thin or grainy. Adjusting its thickness to a creamy texture gives a smooth, cohesive sauce that clings to food.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, clove, garlic, oregano, marjoram):

  1. Eggplantfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, clove, garlic, oregano, marjoram. 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.

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes