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Spiced Vinegar

A flavored vinegar made by infusing cider vinegar with spices, herbs, garlic, onions, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Spiced Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the vinegar

  1. Combine all ingredients in a jar and cover it well.

  2. Let it stand for three weeks.

  3. Strain the mixture and bottle it securely.

Use

  1. Use for flavoring salads and other dishes.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

  4. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 carries and sharpens the flavors of the other ingredients.
Celery seed
Adds a warm, savory aroma that infuses into the vinegar over time.
Dried mint
Contributes a cool, fresh aroma to the finished vinegar.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness that softens the sharpness of the vinegar.
Onions
Release aromatic compounds slowly into the liquid, adding savory depth.

The step that matters

Let it stand for three weeks. Flavor compounds from the seeds, herbs, and onions extract slowly into the acidic liquid. Bottling early leaves the vinegar thin and underflavored.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cider, vinegar, celery, parsley, garlic, clove, onion):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, vinegar, celery, parsley, garlic, clove, onion. 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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