Name: Pepper Tea
Ingredients: 6 red peppers, broken into small pieces; 1 pint boiling water; 1 teaspoon salt; ½ pint vinegar

Why it works: Pepper and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,814 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Pepper Tea

Ingredients

6 red peppers, broken into small pieces
1 pint boiling water
1 teaspoon salt
½ pint vinegar

Directions

Place the broken red peppers in a bowl.
Pour boiling water over the peppers.
Add salt and vinegar.
Stir well and let steep for a few minutes before using.

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.

Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Red peppers: Provide the main flavour and aroma that the liquid takes on as it steeps.
Vinegar: Adds acidity, sharpening the flavour of the tea.

“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.