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Anise Vinegar

A vinegar infused with anise, caraway, fennel, and coriander seeds, steeped in alcohol and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Anise and fennel share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 47 recipes. Both carry cis-anethole, which smells anise. The science ↓

Anise Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grind the anise, caraway, fennel, and coriander seeds into a coarse powder.

  2. Pour the alcohol and strong vinegar over the powders.

Steep and bottle

  1. Seal the vessel tightly and let it sit in a warm place for 6 to 8 days, shaking frequently.

  2. Strain the liquid, press out the residue, filter the vinegar, and bottle it.

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. Anise + fenneltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together47 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-anethole (anise).

  2. Anise + carawaytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together38 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Fennel + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together426 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Anise + coriandertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together86 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Caraway + fenneltop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together51 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Anise seed
Supplies the dominant licorice-like aroma that flavours the vinegar.
Strong vinegar
Acts as the solvent that draws flavour compounds out of the ground seeds.
Alcohol
Helps extract aromatic compounds from the seeds that vinegar alone dissolves less well.

The step that matters

Seal the vessel and steep for 6 to 8 days. Flavour is extracted slowly, so a tight seal keeps the aromatics from escaping and the warm, shaken steeping gives the seeds steady contact with the liquid. Stopping early leaves the vinegar weak and underflavoured.

Swap the caraway

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (anise, fennel, coriander, vinegar):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Carawaythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against anise, fennel, coriander, 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.

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