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Sauce

Chili Sauce

A fermented tomato and pepper sauce flavored with sugar, salt, vinegar, spices, and topped with horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Chili Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the tomatoes, peppers, and onions.

  2. Sprinkle ½ cup salt over the tomatoes and let them sit overnight.

  3. In the morning, drain the liquid from the tomatoes.

Cook and finish

  1. Add the chopped green peppers, 1 cup sugar, 4 tablespoons clove, and 3 pints vinegar to the tomatoes.

  2. Cook the mixture slowly for several hours.

  3. Top with grated horseradish to prevent molding.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Clove + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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

Tomatoes
Form the bulk of the sauce and supply most of its liquid and body.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens flavour and helps preserve the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar.
Clove
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavour.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture slowly for several hours. A long, gentle simmer evaporates excess water and concentrates the flavours. Heat that is too high can scorch the sugar and tomatoes on the bottom of the pot, so the mixture needs regular stirring.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, onion, sugar, vinegar, clove, horseradish):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, sugar, vinegar, clove, horseradish. 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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