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Camp Vinegar

A flavored vinegar made with garlic, cayenne, soy sauce, walnut ketchup, anchovies, and cochineal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Camp Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the sliced garlic in a wide-mouthed bottle.

  2. Add Cayenne, soy sauce, walnut ketchup, chopped anchovies, and vinegar.

  3. Add enough cochineal to achieve a lavender color.

Steep and finish

  1. Let the mixture stand for six weeks.

  2. Strain the mixture until clear and store in small sealed bottles.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Garlic + walnuttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

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

What each ingredient does

Garlic
Provides the main pungent flavour, which mellows and spreads into the vinegar as it steeps.
Vinegar
Acts as the solvent and preserving base, extracting flavour from the other ingredients over time.
Anchovies
Add savoury depth, supplying umami that rounds out the sharp acidity.
Soy sauce
Adds salty, savoury depth that complements the anchovies and garlic.
Cayenne pepper
Supplies heat and pungency that infuses into the vinegar during steeping.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand for six weeks. Flavour extraction is slow, and the garlic and spices need the full steeping time to release their compounds into the vinegar. Straining too early leaves the flavour weak and harsh.

Swap the walnut

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

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

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