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Pepper Vinegar

A vinegar infused with ripe pepper pods, reduced to a quarter of its original volume.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,814 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Pepper Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the stems from the pepper pods and cut them in half.

  2. Place the pepper pods in a kettle with the vinegar.

Reduce and strain

  1. Boil the mixture until it reduces to 1 quart.

  2. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

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. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe pepper pods
Provide the main pepper flavour and heat that infuse into the vinegar.
Vinegar
Acts as the liquid that extracts flavour from the peppers and gives the sharp, acidic base.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it reduces to 1 quart. Boiling concentrates both the vinegar and the pepper flavour as water evaporates. Stopping before the volume reaches 1 quart leaves the condiment weak, while reducing too far makes it overly strong and harsh.

“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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