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Flavored Vinegars

A vinegar infused with celery, nasturtium seed, onion, and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and horseradish work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 835 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Flavored Vinegars

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Steep the celery, nasturtium seed, grated onion, and horseradish in boiling vinegar. Let it cool.

  2. Pour into small wide-mouth bottles.

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. Celery + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together835 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Acts as the liquid base that extracts and carries the flavors of the aromatics.
Horseradish
Contributes a sharp, pungent aroma and heat that infuses into the vinegar.
Grated onion
Adds savory, sulfurous aroma that mellows as it steeps in the vinegar.
Celery
Adds a fresh, vegetal aroma and light savory note to the vinegar.
Nasturtium seed
Adds a peppery, pungent flavor to the vinegar.

The step that matters

Steep in boiling vinegar, then let it cool. Boiling vinegar extracts flavor from the aromatics quickly, but the infusion works best when it cools slowly with the solids still in it. Pouring while still hot can drive off volatile aromas and leave the flavor weak or uneven.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, onion, 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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