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Celery Vinegar

A vinegar infused with celery root or seed, seasoned with salt, used as a condiment.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,627 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Celery Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse

  1. Cut the white part of fresh celery root and stalks into slices.

  2. Pour 1 pint of boiling vinegar over the celery.

  3. Let it cool slightly, then cork it down.

Finish and bottle

  1. After three weeks, strain and bottle for keeping.

  2. If celery root is unavailable, use ½ ounce of bruised celery seed instead.

  3. Boil ½ teaspoon of coarse sea salt in the mixture.

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. Vinegar + celerytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,627 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

Vinegar
Provides acidity and carries the celery flavour into the liquid as it steeps.
Celery seed
Adds concentrated celery aroma as the optional substitute for fresh celery root.

The step that matters

Strain and bottle after three weeks. The flavour comes from steeping, so the celery needs the full resting time to release its aroma into the vinegar. Straining early leaves the vinegar weak and underflavoured.

“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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