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Sauce

Chili Sauce

A tomato-based sauce with onions, sugar, vinegar, cloves, cinnamon, mustard, cayenne, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Chili Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the tomatoes and onions.

  2. Combine all ingredients in a large pot.

  3. Bring to a boil and cook for 1 hour, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Cinnamon + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body and liquid that cooks down into the sauce.
Onions
Add savory depth and bulk that softens as the sauce simmers.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar and tomatoes.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and helps preserve it.
Ground cinnamon
Contributes warm aroma and sweet spice notes to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring during the long simmer. Tomato and sugar mixtures scorch easily on the bottom of a pot over an hour of cooking. Regular stirring keeps solids from sticking and burning, which would add bitter flavors and spoil the sauce.

Swap the onion

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

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

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