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Drink

Camp Vinegar

A spicy vinegar condiment made with cayenne pepper, soy sauce, walnut pickle, anchovies, garlic, and vinegar, steeped for a month.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Camp Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the vinegar

  1. Combine cayenne pepper, soy sauce, walnut pickle, anchovies, and garlic in a jar.

  2. Pour in the vinegar and shake well.

  3. Let the mixture steep for 1 month, shaking it frequently.

Strain and store

  1. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve or cheesecloth.

  2. Store in small bottles, corked and sealed, or use bottle cement to seal.

  3. Keep in a cool, dark 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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Walnut + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Garlic + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,115 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

Anchovies
Add a salty, savoury depth that rounds out the sharp vinegar.
Walnut pickle
Contributes dark, concentrated flavour of its own to the infused vinegar.
Cayenne pepper
Supplies heat that steeps into the vinegar over the month.
Vinegar
Acts as the solvent, extracting flavour from the other ingredients during steeping.
Soy sauce
Adds salty, savoury umami notes to the sauce.

The step that matters

Steep for a full month, shaking often. Flavour is extracted slowly by the vinegar over time. Shaking spreads the solids through the liquid so extraction is even. Cutting the steeping short leaves the sauce weak and unevenly flavoured.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sauce, clove, garlic, 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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