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Chili Pepper Vinegar

A vinegar infused with dried marigolds, garlic, shallots, pepper, cloves, and chili peppers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,000 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chili Pepper Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse

  1. In a demijohn, combine dried marigolds, garlic, shallots, pepper, cloves, and chili peppers.

  2. Add wine vinegar and cork the demijohn tightly.

Strain and bottle

  1. After six weeks, strain the vinegar through a filter.

  2. Transfer the strained vinegar into bottles.

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. Garlic + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Chili peppers
Provide the heat and pepper flavour that steeps into the vinegar.
Wine vinegar
Acts as the liquid that extracts and carries the flavours from the solids.
Garlic
Adds a pungent aroma that mellows during the long steep.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice notes to the infused vinegar.

The step that matters

Leave the vinegar sealed for the full six weeks. Flavour compounds move slowly from the solids into the vinegar. Cutting the steep short leaves the vinegar weak and thin, and an loose cork lets air in, which can spoil it.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (garlic, shallot, pepper, wine, vinegar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against garlic, shallot, pepper, wine, 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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