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Horseradish Vinegar

A fermented condiment made by grating horse-radish, adding sugar, and steeping in wine or cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Horse and radish work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 529 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

Horseradish Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the horse-radish and place it in an earthen jar.

  2. Add the sugar to the jar.

  3. Pour the vinegar over the horse-radish and sugar.

Steep and bottle

  1. Cover the jar tightly and let it sit for ten days.

  2. After ten days, strain and filter the mixture.

  3. Transfer the liquid into bottles and cork them well.

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. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  2. Radish + winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together58 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetal (cream, earthy).

  3. Horse + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Radish + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + winetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Horse-radish
Supplies the pungent flavour that the vinegar draws out and carries.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with a touch of sweetness.
Wine or cider vinegar
Extracts the horseradish's heat and acts as the preserving liquid.

The step that matters

Covering the jar tightly during the ten-day steep. Horseradish's pungent aroma is volatile and dissipates when exposed to air. A tight cover keeps the flavour compounds in the vinegar, so the infusion stays strong and aromatic.

Swap the radish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (horse, sugar, wine):

  1. Radishthe original
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Beetrootfits less well
  4. Capsicumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against horse, sugar, wine. 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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