Why it works: Celery and vinegar 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 ↓
Cress or Celery Vinegar
Ingredients
Directions
Dry and pound the seeds.
Pour the seeds over the vinegar.
Let it steep for ten days, shaking it every day.
Strain the mixture and bottle it.
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.
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Celery + vinegartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Cress or celery seeds
- Their aroma and flavour are steeped into the vinegar, giving it its character.
- Vinegar
- Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour from the crushed seeds during steeping.
The step that matters
Shaking the steeping vinegar daily. Shaking keeps the crushed seeds in contact with the liquid so flavour extracts evenly over the ten days, rather than settling in one spot.
“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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