Name: Garlic, Onions, or Eschalot Vinegar
Ingredients: 2 ounces garlic, peeled and chopped; 1 quart best vinegar

Why it works: Garlic and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,115 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Garlic, Onions, or Eschalot Vinegar

Ingredients

2 ounces garlic, peeled and chopped
1 quart best vinegar

Directions

Combine the chopped garlic and vinegar in a jar or bottle.
Seal the jar tightly and shake it well every day.
Let it steep for 10 days.
After 10 days, pour off the clear liquid into small 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.

Garlic + vinegartop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,115 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Garlic: Releases its flavor and aroma into the vinegar during steeping.
Vinegar: Acts as the solvent that extracts garlic flavor and carries it through the infusion.

“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.