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Spiced Vinegar

A vinegar infused with ginger, cloves, mace, nutmeg, pepper, allspice, red pepper, turmeric, and horseradish for pickling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 spiced vinegar

  1. Add all spices, ground, into a muslin bag.

  2. Combine the bag with vinegar in a large container.

  3. Let the mixture sit to improve flavor.

Use

  1. Use this spiced vinegar for pickles without boiling it.

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. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 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

Vinegar
Its acidity preserves the pickles and sharpens the flavor of the spices.
Ginger
Adds warm, fresh aroma and a gentle heat.
Horseradish
Its sharp pungency comes from compounds released when the root is grated.
Black pepper
Contributes sharp heat and a pungent, woody aroma.
Allspice
Adds a warm, clove-like aroma that rounds out the blend.
Mace
Adds a delicate, warm aroma similar to nutmeg.

The step that matters

Use the vinegar without boiling it. Heat drives off the volatile aromatic compounds in spices, so boiling the vinegar would weaken the spiced flavor. Letting the spices steep in cold or warm vinegar keeps more of their aroma.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, ginger, clove, nutmeg, pepper, allspice, turmeric. 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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