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Camp Vinegar

A vinegar infused with cayenne pepper, soy sauce, walnut ketchup, anchovies, garlic, and best vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Camp Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the vinegar

  1. Combine cayenne pepper, soy sauce, walnut ketchup, anchovies, and garlic in a jar.

  2. Pour in the vinegar and shake the jar well.

  3. Let the mixture steep for one month, shaking the jar frequently.

Strain and store

  1. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve or cheesecloth.

  2. Store the vinegar in small, tightly corked bottles.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

  4. Walnut + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Dissolve into the vinegar to add deep savoury, umami flavour.
Walnut ketchup
Adds a dark, rich, savoury flavour that deepens the vinegar over time.
Soy sauce
Contributes salty, savoury depth that complements the anchovies.
Cayenne pepper
Provides the heat that infuses into the vinegar during steeping.
Vinegar
Acts as the solvent, extracting flavour from the other ingredients during steeping.

The step that matters

Steeping for one month. The flavours only extract slowly, so the jar must be shaken often and kept sealed for the full month. Stopping early gives a weak, unbalanced vinegar, and an open or poorly sealed jar lets the vinegar evaporate or spoil.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

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