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Garlic Vinegar

A vinegar infused with garlic, cloves, ginger, and salt, steeped for 10 days to 2 weeks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Garlic Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the skin from the garlic cloves and bruise them slightly in a mortar.

  2. Place the garlic in an earthen jar with salt, whole cloves, and whole ginger.

Steep and finish

  1. Pour the vinegar over the mixture and cover closely.

  2. Let it sit for 10 days to 2 weeks, then strain off for use.

  3. Taste a few drops to adjust the flavor as desired.

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. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Garlic + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Garlic + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Garlic + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Clove + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 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 cloves
Provide the main pungent flavor that infuses into the vinegar during steeping.
Vinegar
Acts as the solvent that extracts and preserves the flavors of the garlic and spices.
Whole ginger
Adds a warm, aromatic note that rounds out the sharpness of the garlic.

The step that matters

Cover the jar closely while steeping. A tightly covered jar keeps aromatic compounds from escaping and limits contamination during the long steep, so the infusion stays clean and fully flavored.

Swap the garlic

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, ginger, vinegar. 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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