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Horseradish Vinegar

A condiment made by infusing grated horse-radish in boiled cider vinegar with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Horse and radish work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 529 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

Horseradish Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the grated horse-radish in two glass jars.

Make the infusion

  1. Bring the cider vinegar to a boil.

  2. Add the sugar to the boiling vinegar and stir until dissolved.

  3. Pour the hot vinegar mixture over the horse-radish in the jars.

Steep and bottle

  1. Screw the tops on the jars and shake once a day for one week.

  2. After a week, strain the mixture, bottle it, and seal 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. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  2. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Radish + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together508 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Radish + cidertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together54 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Grated horse-radish
Supplies the sharp, pungent flavour that the vinegar draws out over the week.
Cider vinegar
Acts as the solvent and acid that extracts and preserves the horseradish flavour.
Granulated sugar
Adds a little sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and horseradish.

Swap the radish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (horse, sugar, cider, vinegar):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Radishthe original
  3. Cucumberfits less well
  4. Capsicumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against horse, sugar, cider, 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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