Skip to main content
Drink

Pepper Vinegar

A vinegar infused with sliced bell and green peppers, sweetened with sugar and steeped for two weeks.

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.

  2. Place the sliced peppers and peppercorns in a jar.

Make the pickling vinegar

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

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

  3. Let it cool, then cover and set aside for two weeks.

Strain and bottle

  1. Strain the vinegar through a filter and bottle it.

  2. Cork the bottles 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 body of the pepper flavour and bulk of the vinegar.
Long green peppers
Add fresher, sharper pepper flavour to the infused vinegar.
Vinegar
Acts as the preserving liquid and extracts flavour from the peppers over time.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar by adding sweetness.

The step that matters

Let it cool, then cover and set aside for two weeks. The vinegar must cool before covering so that condensation and trapped heat do not spoil the peppers. The two-week rest lets the vinegar slowly extract flavour from the peppers, so bottling early gives a weaker, less balanced result.

“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