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Horseradish Vinegar

A vinegar infused with horseradish, cayenne pepper, and shallot, used as a relish.

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 the vinegar, horseradish, cayenne pepper, and shallot in a jar.

  2. Seal the jar and let it sit for one week.

  3. Use as a relish for cold beef, salads, and more.

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. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + shallottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + horseradishtop 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

Horseradish
Provides the sharp, pungent heat that flavors the vinegar.
Vinegar
Acts as the base that extracts and carries the horseradish flavor.
Shallot
Adds a mild onion-like sharpness that rounds out the flavor.
Cayenne pepper
Adds additional background heat to the vinegar.

The step that matters

Let it sit for one week. Steeping gives the vinegar time to draw out the volatile compounds in horseradish, which create its sharp flavor. Cutting the time short leaves the infusion weak and underdeveloped.

Swap the shallot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, horseradish, pepper. 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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