Name: Cayknne Vinegar
Ingredients: ¼ to ½ ounce cayenne pepper; 1 pint pale vinegar

Why it works: Pepper and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,814 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cayknne Vinegar

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

¼ to ½ ounce cayenne pepper
1 pint pale vinegar

Directions

Place ¼ to ½ ounce of cayenne pepper into a bottle.
Pour 1 pint of pale vinegar over the pepper.
Cork the bottle tightly and shake it well every 2 to 3 days.
Let it sit for at least 2 weeks, but it can be stored for up to 12 months before 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.

Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 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

Cayenne pepper: Provides the heat and chili flavour that infuses into the vinegar over time.
Pale vinegar: Acts as the liquid that extracts flavour and heat from the pepper.

“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.