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Garlic Vinegar

Vinegar infused with garlic, nutmeg, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Garlic Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut 1½ ounces of garlic.

  2. Bruise 1 nutmeg and 3 cloves.

Steep and bottle

  1. Steep them in 1 quart of vinegar for a week, shaking daily.

  2. Strain and bottle the mixture.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Garlic + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Garlic + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,630 recipes

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

  5. Clove + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 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

Garlic
Supplies the pungent, sharp aroma that flavours the vinegar as it steeps.
Vinegar
Acts as the solvent that draws flavour compounds out of the garlic and spices.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes that are released as it is bruised and steeped.
Cloves
Contribute warm, pungent aromatic compounds to the steeped vinegar.

The step that matters

Bruising the nutmeg and cloves. Bruising breaks open the cell structure of the spices, exposing more of their aromatic oils to the vinegar so they release flavour during steeping.

Swap the garlic

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nutmeg, clove, 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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