Skip to main content
Drink

Spiced Vinegar

A vinegar infused with sugar and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spiced Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spices

  1. Mix the spices together.

  2. Put the spices in bags made of thin but strong muslin.

  3. Place the bags in a 3-gallon crock with a small neck.

  4. Fill the crock with the best cider vinegar.

Infuse

  1. Keep the crock closely covered.

  2. Allow the mixture to infuse until well flavored.

Bottle and store

  1. Strain the vinegar into bottles, cork, seal, and store.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Turmeric + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cider vinegar
Provides the acidic base that extracts and carries the spice flavours.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Whole cloves
Contribute warm, pungent aroma to the infused vinegar.
Allspice
Adds warm, mingled aromatic flavour to the infused vinegar.
Turmeric
Gives the vinegar a yellow colour and an earthy flavour.

The step that matters

Allow the mixture to infuse until well flavored. Spice flavour compounds dissolve into the vinegar slowly over time. Straining too early leaves the vinegar weak and under-spiced, while keeping the crock closed limits evaporation and loss of aroma.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, clove, pepper, allspice, turmeric, celery, ginger):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, clove, pepper, allspice, turmeric, celery, ginger. 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.

You might also like

Raspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesGinger PopGinger Pop22 recipesSugar VinegarSugar Vinegar20 recipesGinger WineGinger Wine12 recipes