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Drink

Green Mint Vinegar

A vinegar infused with fresh mint leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Mint and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,376 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Green Mint Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop or bruise freshly-gathered mint leaves.

  2. Fill bottles with the mint leaves nearly to the neck.

  3. Add vinegar to the bottles.

Steep and bottle

  1. Seal and let it sit for 40 days.

  2. Strain the mixture and bottle it for use.

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. Mint + vinegartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh mint leaves
Release their aromatic oils into the vinegar, giving it a mint flavour and aroma.
Vinegar
Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour from the leaves and preserves the infused liquid.

The step that matters

Chopping or bruising the mint. Breaking the leaves ruptures their cell walls, exposing more aromatic oils to the vinegar so the flavour extracts faster and more fully during the 40-day steep.

“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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