Why it works: Mint and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,376 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Green Mint Vinegar
Ingredients
Directions
Infuse
Chop or bruise fresh mint leaves and fill bottles nearly full.
Pour in pale vinegar until the bottles are full.
Rest and bottle
Let it sit for six weeks.
Strain the mixture and bottle it for use.
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.
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Mint + vinegartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,376 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Fresh mint leaves
- Release their aromatic oils into the vinegar, flavouring it as they steep.
- Pale vinegar
- Acts as the solvent that extracts mint flavour and keeps the infusion stable.
The step that matters
Chop or bruise the mint before filling the bottles. Breaking the leaves ruptures their cells and exposes more aromatic oils to the vinegar, so the flavour extracts more fully over the long rest.
“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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