Skip to main content
Drink

Pepper Vinegar

A vinegar infused with bell and green peppers and peppercorns, sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,814 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Pepper Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the bell and long green peppers and place them in a jar with the peppercorns.

Make the vinegar

  1. Boil the vinegar and add the sugar until dissolved.

  2. Pour the boiling vinegar over the peppers in the jar.

Steep and bottle

  1. Once cool, cover the jar and let it sit for two weeks.

  2. Strain the vinegar through a filter, then bottle and cork tightly.

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. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Pepper and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Bell peppers
Provide the main pepper flavor and body that infuses into the vinegar.
Long green peppers
Add fresher, grassier pepper flavor to the infused vinegar.
Peppercorns
Contribute sharp, aromatic heat that develops during steeping.
Vinegar
Acts as the solvent and preserving base, extracting flavor from the peppers.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling vinegar over the peppers in the jar. Hot vinegar helps extract flavor from the peppers and sterilizes the jar contents, while letting the vinegar cool before sealing avoids pressure buildup and spoilage risk during the long steep.

“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.

You might also like

Raspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesSugar VinegarSugar Vinegar20 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipes