Skip to main content
Main

Chilli Sauce

A thick, spiced tomato sauce made with tomatoes, onions, red pepper, salt, sugar, cinnamon, ginger, mace, cloves, and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Chilli Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine tomatoes, onions, red pepper, salt, sugar, cinnamon, ginger, mace, cloves, and horseradish in a porcelain kettle.

  2. Boil until reduced by half or until thick.

  3. Add spices five minutes before removing from heat.

Jar

  1. Pour into jars while hot and seal.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 bulk and sweetness that deepens as the sauce cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the tomatoes.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the sauce and helps draw out moisture for thickening.
Red pepper
Adds heat and pepper flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil until reduced by half or until thick. Tomatoes and onions contain a lot of water, so the sauce must simmer long enough for that water to evaporate. Stopping early leaves a thin sauce that may not keep well in sealed jars.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, pepper, sugar, cinnamon, ginger, clove. 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 Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes