Name: Spiced Nutmegs
Ingredients: small nutmegs, not quite ripe; vinegar; 2 pints brown sugar; spices (cloves, cinnamon, mace)

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spiced Nutmegs

Ingredients

small nutmegs, not quite ripe
vinegar
2 pints brown sugar
spices (cloves, cinnamon, mace)

Directions

Prepare

Pare and quarter the nutmegs, then cover them with vinegar and let them stand for 24 hours.
Measure out 1 quart of the vinegar. For each remaining quart, add 2 pints of brown sugar.

Make the pickling liquid

Combine the measured quart of vinegar with the sugar mixture and bring to a boil for a few minutes.
Tie the spices in a bag and place them in a jar with the nutmegs.
Pour the vinegar mixture over them.

Cook and store

Boil the vinegar once a day for three consecutive days.
On the third day, add the nutmegs and boil for 15 minutes.
Transfer the nutmegs to stone jars; they will be ready for use in three weeks.

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.

Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,557 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Clove + macetop 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

Small nutmegs: Provide the main fruit that is pared, quartered, and cooked until tender in the syrup.
Vinegar: Acts as the sharp preserving liquid that softens and preserves the nutmegs.
Brown sugar: Sweetens the pickling liquid and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.

Swap the mace

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

Allspicefits better
Cardamomfits better
Gingerfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nutmeg, vinegar, sugar, clove, cinnamon. 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.