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Horseradish Vinegar

A preserved horseradish condiment made with vinegar, cayenne pepper, salt, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Horseradish Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the infusion

  1. In a jar, combine grated horseradish, cayenne, salt, and mustard.

  2. Pour boiling vinegar over the mixture.

  3. Cover the jar and place it by the fire for two weeks.

Finish and bottle

  1. After two weeks, boil the vinegar, then let it cool.

  2. Strain the mixture through a jelly bag and bottle 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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Horseradish + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Horseradish + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 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

Horseradish
Supplies the sharp, pungent flavour that the vinegar carries.
Vinegar
Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour from the horseradish and cayenne.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat that builds up during the steeping period.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent note that rounds out the heat.

The step that matters

Boil the vinegar after two weeks. Boiling the steeped vinegar before cooling and straining helps stabilise it for bottling. Heat also drives off some of the volatile aroma, so the flavour may soften slightly. Let it cool fully before bottling.

“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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