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Onion Vinegar

A preserved vinegar flavored with sliced onions, salt, sugar, and tarragon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and tarragon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,547 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Onion Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the sliced onions in an earthen jar.

  2. Add the salt and sugar to the onions.

  3. Boil the wine vinegar and pour it over the onions while hot.

  4. Cover the jar and let it sit for two weeks.

Strain and bottle

  1. After two weeks, strain and filter the vinegar.

  2. Pour the vinegar into bottles, adding a sprig of tarragon to each.

  3. Cork the bottles tightly and store them in a cool place.

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. Vinegar + tarragontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Onion + tarragontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,568 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Wine + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,493 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Wine + tarragontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together521 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  5. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

White onions
Provide the flavour base that infuses into the vinegar over the two weeks.
Wine vinegar
Acts as the acidic liquid that extracts and carries the onion flavour.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture from the onions and seasons the vinegar.

The step that matters

Pour the vinegar over the onions while it is still hot. Hot vinegar softens the onion and helps its flavour extract more readily, so pouring it cool would give a weaker infusion. Keeping the jar covered holds in aroma during the long rest.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, wine, vinegar, tarragon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, wine, vinegar, tarragon. 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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