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Drink

Mint Vinegar

A vinegar infused with mint, spearmint, and parsley leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Peppermint and spearmint share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Mint Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse

  1. Fill a wide-mouthed bottle loosely with fresh mint or parsley leaves.

  2. Pour in enough vinegar to fill the bottle.

  3. Seal the bottle tightly and let it sit for 2 to 3 weeks.

Strain and store

  1. Strain the liquid into another bottle and cork it well for storage.

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. Peppermint + spearminttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Peppermint + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together729 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Spearmint + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Peppermint + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together769 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Parsley + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh peppermint leaves
Release their aromatic oils into the vinegar, giving it a cool minty flavour.
Fresh spearmint leaves
Add a sweeter, milder mint aroma that blends into the vinegar.
Fresh garden parsley leaves
Contribute a fresh, grassy green flavour and aroma to the vinegar.
Good vinegar
Acts as the solvent, drawing flavour compounds out of the leaves over time.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peppermint, spearmint, vinegar):

  1. Rosemaryfits better
  2. Mintfits better
  3. Dillfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peppermint, spearmint, 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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