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Prepared Vinegar

A vinegar infused with mustard, spices, horseradish, garlic, sugar, celery seed, and lemons for pickling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Prepared Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the vinegar

  1. Combine vinegar, mustard seed, ginger, black pepper, allspice, cloves, mace, horseradish, garlic, sugar, celery seed, and lemons in a large container.

  2. If making yellow pickle, add turmeric.

  3. Set the mixture in the sun during hot summer weather and store in a dry place.

Use for pickling

  1. When using for pickling, ensure the cabbage is boiled briefly in salted water and drained in the sun before adding to the vinegar.

  2. Sprinkle cabbage with turmeric before placing it in the vinegar.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 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. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 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

Vinegar
Provides the acidic liquid base that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent heat and flavour that deepens as the seeds steep in the vinegar.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Lemons
Contribute acidity and citrus aroma to the steeping liquid.
Horseradish
Contributes sharp, pungent flavour that mellows during steeping.

The step that matters

Sprinkle cabbage with turmeric before placing it in the vinegar. Turmeric is the colouring for the yellow pickle; sprinkling it on the cabbage before it enters the vinegar helps distribute the colour evenly rather than leaving streaks or clumps.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, mustard, ginger, pepper, allspice, clove, horseradish):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, mustard, ginger, pepper, allspice, 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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