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Camp Vinegar

A flavored vinegar infused with garlic, cayenne pepper, soy sauce, walnut ketchup, and cochineal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Camp Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Slice the garlic and place it in a clean bottle with all the other ingredients.

  2. Let the mixture infuse for one month.

  3. Strain the mixture until clear and store it in small, well-sealed bottles to exclude air.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Garlic + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Garlic + walnuttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

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

What each ingredient does

Garlic
Provides the main pungent, savoury flavour that the vinegar draws out over time.
Vinegar
Acts as the solvent and preservative, extracting flavour from the garlic and pepper while adding sharp acidity.
Cayenne pepper
Supplies the heat, from capsaicin, which dissolves into the vinegar during infusion.
Soy sauce
Adds salty, savoury depth that rounds out the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture infuse for one month. Vinegar extracts flavour and heat from garlic and pepper slowly. Cutting the infusion short leaves the result harsh and underdeveloped, with weaker flavour and less balance.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (garlic, pepper, sauce, ketchup, vinegar):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Black-eyed peafits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against garlic, pepper, sauce, ketchup, 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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