Name: Flavoured Vinegars
Ingredients: plain vinegar; herbs or roots (e.g., horse-radish, celery, chili, garlic, mushroom, walnut); fruit (e.g., raspberry, blackberry, plum); sugar

Why it works: Raspberry and blackberry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 278 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, sweet. The science ↓

Flavoured Vinegars

Ingredients

plain vinegar
herbs or roots (e.g., horse-radish, celery, chili, garlic, mushroom, walnut)
fruit (e.g., raspberry, blackberry, plum)
sugar

Directions

Steep herbs or roots in plain vinegar for about two weeks.
Strain the vinegar and boil it in a pan for a short time.
Let it cool and then bottle it for use.
For fruit vinegars, steep the fruit in vinegar until the color and flavor are extracted.
Strain the vinegar into an enamelled pan and boil it with half its amount of sugar for ten minutes.
Bottle the mixture well.

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.

Raspberry + blackberrytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together278 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, sweet).
Blackberry + plumtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together36 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Raspberry + plumtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together80 recipes

Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).
Vinegar + plumtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together655 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).
Vinegar + raspberrytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together303 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Swap the plum

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, horse, raspberry, blackberry, sugar):

Peachfits better
Vanillafits better
Strawberryfits better
Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, horse, raspberry, blackberry, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.