Name: Celery Vinegar
Ingredients: ½ pint celery seed; 1 quart vinegar

Why it works: Celery and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,627 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Celery Vinegar

Ingredients

½ pint celery seed
1 quart vinegar

Directions

Combine celery seed and vinegar in a jar.
Seal the jar and let it sit for one month.
Strain the mixture before transferring it to a bottle for use.

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.

Celery + vinegartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,627 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

Celery seed: Provides the main aroma and flavour, infusing the vinegar over time.
Vinegar: Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour from the seed and gives the sharp, acidic base.

“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.