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Chili Sauce

A tomato-based chili sauce with onions, spices, and garlic, simmered for a long time.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Chili Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the olive oil in a granite pan.

  2. Add the chopped onions and the tomato juice.

  3. Stir in the chili powder, bay leaves, marjoram, and cloves.

  4. Simmer the mixture for nearly all day.

  5. Before removing from heat, add the whole garlic and cook until it can be mashed, then lift it out.

  6. Strain the sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Olive + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Marjoram + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Olive + garlictop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Break down during simmering to add body and sweetness to the sauce.
Tomato juice
Provides the liquid base and acidity that the sauce reduces into.
Olive oil
Carries the aromatics and adds fat for a rounded mouthfeel.
Chili powder or paprika
Adds warm, earthy heat and color to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering the mixture for a long time. Long, slow simmering reduces the liquid and softens the onions so the flavors concentrate and blend. Too little time leaves the sauce thin and sharp-tasting.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, onion, tomato, marjoram, garlic):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Oreganofits better
  3. Basilfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, onion, tomato, marjoram, garlic. 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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