Name: Camp Vinegar
Ingredients: 1 large head of garlic; ½ ounce Cayenne pepper; 2 teaspoons soy sauce; 2 teaspoons walnut ketchup; 4 anchovies, chopped; 1 pint vinegar; cochineal (to color)

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

Prepare

Slice the garlic and place it in a wide‑mouthed bottle.
Add Cayenne, soy sauce, walnut ketchup, chopped anchovies, and vinegar.
Add enough cochineal to achieve a lavender color.

Steep and bottle

Let the mixture stand for six weeks.
Strain the mixture until clear and store in small sealed 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.

Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,099 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,090 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Garlic + vinegartop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,115 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,039 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Garlic + walnuttop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,009 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

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

What each ingredient does

Garlic: Provides the main pungent flavor that infuses into the vinegar over time.
Vinegar: Acts as the preserving liquid that extracts flavor from the garlic and anchovies.
Anchovies: Add savory depth and umami to the sauce.
Cayenne pepper: Adds heat and sharpness to the finished condiment.

Swap the walnut

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

Beansfits better
Sesamefits better
Black-eyed peafits better
Walnutthe original

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