Name: Capsicum or Chili Vinegar
Ingredients: 50 fresh red chilies (or capsicums) or ¼ ounce cayenne pepper; 1 pint best vinegar

Why it works: Capsicum and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,160 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Capsicum or Chili Vinegar

Ingredients

50 fresh red chilies (or capsicums) or ¼ ounce cayenne pepper
1 pint best vinegar

Directions

Pound the chilies or cayenne pepper.
Steep in the vinegar for 14 days.

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.

Capsicum + vinegartop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,160 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

Fresh red chilies: Supply the heat and pepper flavor that the vinegar extracts over the steeping period.
Vinegar: Acts as the solvent that draws out capsaicin and flavor from the chilies and preserves the infusion.

“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.