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Spring Vinegar of Herbs

A vinegar infused with dried herbs, garlic, shallots, onions, mustard seed, cloves, mace, long pepper, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Chervil and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 266 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Spring Vinegar of Herbs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Gather small herbs in late May or early June and dry them in the sun.

Infuse

  1. Place the dried herbs in a 6-quart jar with garlic, shallots, onions, mustard seed, cloves, mace, long pepper, and sliced lemon.

  2. Fill the jar with vinegar and seal it tightly.

  3. Expose the jar to sunlight for 8 to 10 days.

Strain and bottle

  1. Strain the mixture through a cotton or flannel bag.

  2. Bottle the vinegar, sealing with cork and leather for storage.

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. Chervil + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together266 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Shallot + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Chervil + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together207 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Garlic + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Serves as the liquid base that extracts flavour from the herbs and aromatics.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma that infuses into the vinegar over the long steeping.
Shallots
Contribute mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the infused vinegar.
Lemon
Adds acidity and citrus aroma from the rind and flesh as it steeps.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice notes to the vinegar.

The step that matters

Expose the jar to sunlight for 8 to 10 days. Sealed steeping in warm sunlight speeds extraction of aromatic compounds from the herbs and spices. Too little time leaves the flavour weak, while the sealed jar must stay closed so the vinegar does not evaporate or spoil.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chervil, clove, garlic, shallot, onion, mustard, pepper):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chervil, clove, garlic, shallot, onion, mustard, pepper. 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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