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Drink

Strawberry Vinegar

A fermented vinegar made by steeping strawberries in white wine vinegar and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: White wine and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,776 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Strawberry Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the vinegar

  1. Place fresh, ripe strawberries in a jar, adding 1½ pints of white wine vinegar for each pound of berries.

  2. Cover the jar with thick paper and let it sit for 3 to 4 days.

  3. Drain the vinegar and pour it over 4 pounds of fresh strawberries.

  4. Let the mixture sit for 3 days.

  5. Drain it again and repeat with fresh strawberries.

Make the syrup

  1. After the final draining, add 1 pound of refined sugar for each pint of vinegar.

  2. Stir the mixture over low heat until the sugar dissolves, about 5 minutes.

  3. Skim off any foam, pour the syrup into a pitcher, and cover it until the next day.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the vinegar and cork it loosely for the first few 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.

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

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

  2. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  3. White wine + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,586 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Strawberries
Provide the fruit flavor and aroma that the vinegar takes on during infusion.
White wine vinegar
Extracts flavor from the berries and gives the finished drink its sharp acidity.
Refined sugar
Sweetens the vinegar and balances its acidity.

The step that matters

Stir the sugar in over low heat. Gentle heat dissolves the sugar without scorching it or boiling off the delicate strawberry aroma; sugar dissolves more smoothly in warm liquid than cold.

“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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