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

A spiced vinegar mixture for pickles made with cider vinegar, garlic, onions, horseradish, ginger, pepper, allspice, cloves, cayenne, mustard seed, and turmeric.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

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

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a stone jar, combine all ingredients.

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

  3. Let the mixture steep or keep it hot 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 + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Garlic + horseradishtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together719 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Garlic + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cider vinegar
Acts as the base liquid that extracts flavour from the spices and aromatics.
Horseradish roots
Adds sharp pungency that carries into the vinegar as it steeps.
Cayenne peppers
Supplies heat and pungent flavour to the steeped vinegar.
Mustard seed
Contributes sharp, pungent flavour that infuses into the vinegar.
Garlic cloves
Adds pungent aroma and savoury depth to the vinegar.

The step that matters

Keeping the mixture hot while it steeps. Gentle heat speeds the extraction of flavour from the spices and roots into the vinegar. Letting it cool or steeping too briefly can leave the infusion weak, so the flavour is not fully drawn out.

Swap the onion

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

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

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