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To Make Shalot Vinegar

A vinegar infused with shallots and horseradish, used in salads, meats, soups, and gravies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,776 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

To Make Shalot Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the vinegar

  1. Combine shallots, horseradish, and vinegar in a bottle.

  2. Cork the bottle tightly and let it sit for 10 days, shaking it often.

  3. After 10 days, strain and bottle the vinegar for use.

Use

  1. Use it in salads, with cold mutton or beef, or to flavor soups and gravies.

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. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Horseradish + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Horseradish + white winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together195 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 (in the method)
Release their sharp, aromatic flavor into the vinegar over the steeping period.
Horseradish
Adds pungent heat that infuses into the vinegar as it steeps.
White wine vinegar
Acts as the liquid base that extracts and carries the shallot and horseradish flavors.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, vinegar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, 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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