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A spiced white wine vinegar condiment made with garlic, shallot, ginger, cayenne, coriander, sea salt and lemon peel, for use with meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Or Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the vinegar

  1. In a marble mortar, beat the garlic, shallot, ginger, cayenne, coriander seed, and salt together.

  2. Pour boiling white wine vinegar over the mixture.

  3. Add the thinly cut lemon peel.

Bottle and use

  1. Let it cool, then transfer to a bottle and cork it tightly.

  2. Shake well before using.

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. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Garlic + coriandertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Garlic + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Garlic
Adds pungent, savoury aroma that mellows as the vinegar steeps.
Shallot
Contributes a milder, sweeter onion-like flavour to the infused vinegar.
White wine vinegar
Acts as the acidic base that extracts and carries the flavours of the other ingredients.
Coriander seed
Provides warm, citrusy aromatic notes to the vinegar.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat, which spreads through the liquid as it infuses.

The step that matters

Pouring boiling vinegar over the mixture. Boiling vinegar releases the aromatic compounds from the crushed spices and garlic more quickly. Pour it over the mixture while it is still hot, then let it cool before corking, so the flavours infuse without the bottle building pressure from heat.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Shallotthe original
  3. Broccolifits about as well
  4. Tomatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, garlic, ginger, pepper, coriander, 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.

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