Name: To Make Vinegar
Ingredients: 1 pound brown sugar; 1 cup good vinegar; 1 gallon rain water

Why it works: Sugar and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

To Make Vinegar

Ingredients

1 pound brown sugar
1 cup good vinegar
1 gallon rain water

Directions

Combine the brown sugar, vinegar, and rain water in a large container.
Stir until the sugar is fully dissolved.
Keep the mixture in a warm place.

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.

Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,806 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

Brown sugar: Provides the sugar that fuels fermentation into acetic acid, giving the vinegar its flavor.
Vinegar: Acts as a starter culture, bringing bacteria that convert the sugar solution into vinegar.
Rain water: Dilutes the sugar and forms the liquid base in which fermentation takes place.

“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.