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Kitchen Pepper

A spice blend of ginger, cinnamon, black pepper, nutmeg, Jamaica pepper, cloves, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Kitchen Pepper

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix all ingredients into a fine powder.

  2. Store in a bottle with a tight seal.

  3. Use as an addition to brown sauces or soups.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Ginger
Adds a warm, pungent aroma and a spicy bite to the blend.
Cinnamon
Contributes sweet, woody aroma that rounds out the warm spice flavour.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, pungent heat that gives the blend its main bite.
Nutmeg
Adds a sweet, warm aroma that deepens the spice profile.
Jamaica pepper
Adds aromatic, clove-like notes that give the blend depth.
Cloves
Contributes intense, sweet aromatic compounds that dominate the flavour in small amounts.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cinnamon, pepper, nutmeg, clove):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, pepper, nutmeg, clove. 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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