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Celery Vinegar

Celery vinegar made by boiling celery with vinegar, cayenne pepper, sea salt, and peppercorns, then steeping for two months.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Celery Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the celery into small pieces.

  2. In a pot, combine the celery, vinegar, cayenne, salt, and peppercorns.

Simmer

  1. Boil slowly for 15 minutes.

Steep and bottle

  1. Pour the mixture into a jar.

  2. After 2 months, bottle 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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Celery + vinegartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,627 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

Celery
Supplies the main celery flavour that passes into the vinegar as it steeps.
Vinegar
Acts as the solvent and acidic base that draws out and carries the celery flavour.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat and a sharp, pungent note to the finished vinegar.

The step that matters

Holding the vinegar for 2 months before bottling. Flavour keeps developing as the celery and spices steep in the vinegar. Bottling too early leaves the vinegar weaker in celery flavour, so the full rest period matters.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper. 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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