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Horseradish Vinegar

A preserved horseradish and shallot mixture steeped in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 376 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Horseradish Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine all ingredients in a bottle.

  2. Shake well every day for two weeks.

  3. Once steeped, strain and bottle the mixture. It is ready for use immediately.

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. Horseradish + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Horseradish + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Shallot + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Horseradish + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Scraped horseradish
Supplies the pungent heat and sharp aroma that flavour the vinegar.
Shallot
Adds a mild savoury sweetness that rounds out the sharp horseradish heat.
Cayenne pepper
Adds direct, lingering heat to the vinegar.
Vinegar
Acts as the solvent that extracts and carries the horseradish and shallot flavours.

The step that matters

Shake well every day for two weeks. Regular shaking keeps the solids in contact with the vinegar so flavour compounds extract evenly over the full steeping period. Skipping days can leave the infusion weak or uneven.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Radishfits about as well
  3. Cabbagefits about as well
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against horseradish, pepper, 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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