Name: Spiced Vinegar
Ingredients: 1 pound whole cloves; 1 pound whole allspice; ½ pound crushed cinnamon; ½ pound crushed ginger root; 5 gallons 45-grain vinegar

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Spiced Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse

Soak the spices in the vinegar for 12 hours.

Simmer and strain

Place the mixture in a suitable kettle and bring to a boil.
Simmer gently for one hour.
Strain off the liquid and add enough vinegar to make 5 gallons.

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.

Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,380 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,038 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole cloves: Contribute warm, pungent aromatic compounds that flavour the vinegar.
Whole allspice: Adds warm, sweet-spicy aroma that blends cinnamon and clove notes.
Crushed cinnamon: Releases sweet, woody aromatic oils that flavour the vinegar.
Crushed ginger root: Adds pungent, warming aroma and bite to the infused vinegar.
45-grain vinegar: Acts as the solvent that extracts spice oils and provides the sharp acidic base.

Swap the ginger

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

Nutmegfits better
Cardamomfits about as well
Gingerthe original
Marjoramfits less well

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