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Drink

Camp Vinegar

A flavored vinegar made with garlic, cayenne pepper, soy sauce, walnut ketchup, anchovies, cochineal, and white wine vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Camp Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the garlic.

  2. Place the garlic in a wide-mouthed bottle.

Steep

  1. Add cayenne pepper, soy sauce, walnut ketchup, chopped anchovies, cochineal, and white wine vinegar.

  2. Let it stand for six weeks, shaking frequently.

Strain and bottle

  1. Pour off the clear liquid and store it in small bottles.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

  3. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Garlic + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. 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 aroma and flavour that infuses into the vinegar.
White wine vinegar
Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour from the other ingredients and preserves the mixture.
Anchovies
Add savoury depth and umami to the finished condiment.
Soy sauce
Adds salty, savoury depth that rounds out the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Let it stand for six weeks, shaking frequently. The long steep lets flavour compounds from the garlic and other ingredients slowly dissolve into the vinegar. Shaking spreads the solids through the liquid so extraction is even. Cutting the time short leaves a weak, unbalanced condiment.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against garlic, pepper, sauce, ketchup, 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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