Name: Garlic and Shallot Vinegar
Ingredients: 8 ounces garlic; 8 ounces sliced shallots; 3 pints strong vinegar

Why it works: Garlic and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,000 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Garlic and Shallot Vinegar

Ingredients

8 ounces garlic
8 ounces sliced shallots
3 pints strong vinegar

Directions

Combine garlic and shallots in a jar.
Add strong vinegar to the jar.
Seal the jar tightly.
Place the jar in a warm spot near the fire for one week.

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.

Garlic + shallottop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,000 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Garlic + vinegartop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,115 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Shallot + vinegartop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,374 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Garlic: Releases pungent, aromatic flavor compounds into the vinegar as it steeps.
Shallots: Add a milder, sweeter onion-like flavor that rounds out the garlic.
Strong vinegar: Acts as the solvent, extracting flavor from the garlic and shallots while adding sharp acidity.