Name: Hot Vinegar
Ingredients: 1 quart good brown vinegar; 1 oz cayenne pepper; 1 head of garlic; 1 tablespoon soy sauce; 2 tablespoons walnut ketchup

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 ↓

Hot Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Pour half of the vinegar into a quart wine bottle.
Add the cayenne, garlic, soy sauce, and walnut ketchup.
Let it stand for 3 to 4 days, shaking well each day.
Afterward, fill up with the remaining vinegar and cork tightly.

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.

Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,099 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,090 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Vinegar + garlictop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,115 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,039 recipes

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

Brown vinegar: Forms the acidic liquid base that steeps and carries the other flavors.
Cayenne pepper: Provides the heat that infuses into the vinegar during steeping.
Garlic: Adds pungent aroma and savory depth as its flavor compounds steep into the vinegar.
Soy sauce: Adds salty, savory depth to the vinegar.
Walnut ketchup: Adds concentrated savory, umami flavor to the vinegar.

Swap the walnut

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

Beansfits better
Sesamefits better
Black-eyed peafits better
Walnutthe original

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