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Drink

Burnet or Cucumber Vinegar

A vinegar infused with burnet, shallot, and cayenne pepper, used as a relish for cold meats and salads.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,898 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Burnet or Cucumber Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pour the vinegar over the scraped burnet and minced shallot, then add the cayenne pepper.

Steep and serve

  1. Let the mixture stand for one week.

  2. Use as a relish for cold meats and salads.

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. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Vinegar + shallottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Best vinegar
Provides the acidic base that extracts and carries the flavours of the other ingredients.
Scraped burnet
Supplies the main herbal, cucumber-like aroma and flavour of the infusion.
Minced shallot
Adds a mild onion-like sharpness that mellows during steeping.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat that builds as the vinegar steeps.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand for one week. The acid slowly draws flavour out of the burnet and shallot. Stopping early leaves the infusion weak and the vinegar harsh, so the full steeping time matters.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Cabbagefits better
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, 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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