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Vinegar, Spiced— for Table Use, Mixed Pickles, Etc.

A spiced vinegar made with cider vinegar, garlic, onions, horseradish, ginger, peppercorns, allspice, cloves, cayenne, mustard seeds, and optional turmeric.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Vinegar, Spiced— for Table Use, Mixed Pickles, Etc.

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine all ingredients in a stone jar.

  2. Place the jar on the back of the stove and cover it.

  3. Let the mixture steep or keep it warm for 6 to 10 hours.

  4. Strain the mixture and bottle it for use, or keep it covered in the jar.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Horseradish + allspicetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Cider vinegar
Provides the acidic base that extracts and carries the flavours of the spices.
Horseradish roots
Contributes pungent, sharp heat that infuses into the vinegar during steeping.
Cayenne peppers
Adds capsaicin-driven heat to the vinegar as it steeps.
Mustard seeds
Release pungent flavour into the vinegar, adding sharpness and bite.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cider, vinegar, garlic, clove, horseradish, ginger, allspice):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, vinegar, garlic, clove, horseradish, ginger, allspice. 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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