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Kitchen Pepper

A spice blend made from ginger, cinnamon, black pepper, nutmeg, Jamaica pepper, cloves, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Kitchen Pepper

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spice blend

  1. Grind together ginger, cinnamon, black pepper, nutmeg, Jamaica pepper, cloves, and coarse sea salt.

Prepare the mustard flour

  1. Dry black mustard seeds until they form a powder when bruised.

  2. Grind and sift the mustard seeds to separate the husks.

  3. Mix equal parts mustard flour and coarse sea salt.

Combine

  1. Combine mustard flour, wheat flour, Cayenne pepper, and common salt in large proportions.

  2. Pea flour or turmeric can be used instead of wheat flour.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Ginger
Adds warm, pungent aroma and flavor to the blend.
Cinnamon
Contributes sweet, woody aroma and warmth.
Black pepper
Adds sharp heat and pungent aroma.
Nutmeg
Contributes warm, aromatic flavor.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the blend and balances the spices.
Black mustard seeds
Provide pungent flavor once ground into flour.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, pepper, nutmeg, clove. 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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