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Camp Vinegar

A spicy soy‑flavored vinegar with anchovies, garlic, and pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Camp Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the vinegar

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

  2. Pour in the vinegar and shake well.

  3. Let the mixture steep for 1 month, shaking it frequently.

Strain and store

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

  2. Store in small bottles, corked and sealed, or sealed with bottle cement.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Garlic + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 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

Anchovies
Dissolve into the liquid over the steep, adding a deep savoury backbone to the vinegar.
Soy sauce
Adds salty, savoury depth that rounds out the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Acts as the solvent, extracting flavour from the other ingredients over the month-long steep.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma that mellows and infuses the vinegar during steeping.

The step that matters

Steeping for 1 month with frequent shaking. Flavour is extracted slowly from the solids, and shaking keeps them in contact with the liquid. Rushing this step or skipping the shaking leaves the vinegar thin and harsh rather than rounded and mellow.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Basilfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sauce, 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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