Name: Chili Vinegar
Ingredients: ½ pint best vinegar; 5 red English chilies, cut in half or pounded; ¼ ounce cayenne pepper (optional)

Why it works: Vinegar and pepper 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 ↓

Chili Vinegar

Ingredients

½ pint best vinegar
5 red English chilies, cut in half or pounded
¼ ounce cayenne pepper (optional)

Directions

Infuse the chilies in the vinegar for two weeks.
For a quicker option, add cayenne pepper to the vinegar.
For chili wine, infuse 50 pounded red chilies in brandy instead of 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.

Vinegar + peppertop 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

Vinegar: Acts as the liquid that extracts and carries the chili heat and flavour.
Red chilies: Provide the main heat and pepper flavour that infuses into the vinegar.
Cayenne pepper: Adds extra heat and pepper flavour for a faster result.

“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.