Name: Shalot Vinegar
Ingredients: 6 to 8 shallots; 1 quart vinegar

Why it works: Shallot and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,374 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Shalot Vinegar

Ingredients

6 to 8 shallots
1 quart vinegar

Directions

Prepare

Split the shallots.
Put them into a quart bottle.
Fill the bottle with vinegar.

Steep

Stop the bottle and let it sit for a month before use.

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.

Shallot + vinegartop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,374 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

Shallots: Release their sharp, savory aroma and flavor into the vinegar as they steep.
Vinegar: Acts as the solvent that extracts shallot flavor and provides the acidic base.

“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.