Name: Garlic Vinegar
Ingredients: 10 cloves of garlic; 1 nutmeg; 1 gallon of white wine vinegar

Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Garlic Vinegar

Ingredients

10 cloves of garlic
1 nutmeg
1 gallon of white wine vinegar

Directions

Prepare

Bruise the garlic lightly with the nutmeg.
Pour the white wine vinegar over the garlic and nutmeg.

Steep and bottle

Let it steep for a month.
Pour off the vinegar 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.

Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,368 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,776 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Garlic + vinegartop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,115 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Garlic + white winetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,044 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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, savoury flavour that the vinegar draws out.
Nutmeg: Adds a warm, aromatic spice note to the vinegar.
White wine vinegar: Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour from the garlic and nutmeg and adds sharp acidity.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, garlic, white wine, vinegar):

Thymefits better
Tarragonfits better
Allspicefits better
Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, garlic, white wine, 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.