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Starter for Alcoholic Fermentation

A starter culture made from boiled apple juice, apples, molasses, and vinegar yeast for alcoholic fermentation.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,884 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Starter for Alcoholic Fermentation

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the starter

  1. Wash and sterilize a jar in boiling water.

  2. Fill the jar half full with boiling apple juice.

  3. If no sweet juice is available, slice apples and boil in water until soft.

  4. Add molasses or sugar and strain boiling juice into the jar.

  5. Cover the jar with a sterilized cloth to keep out germs.

Culture and transfer

  1. When cooled to 75°F, shake vinegar yeast and add to the jar.

  2. Keep the jar at 70°F to 80°F.

  3. When foaming is active, pour contents into a barrel of sweet juice.

  4. Cover the bunghole with a thin cloth to keep out dust.

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. Apple + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,884 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Apple + molassestop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together970 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + vinegartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Apple juice
Supplies the sugars that the yeast feeds on to start fermentation.
Apples
Provide juice and natural sugars when fresh sweet juice is not available.
Molasses or sugar
Adds extra sugar as food for the yeast, speeding up fermentation.
Vinegar yeast
Supplies the microbes that start the fermentation process in the juice.

The step that matters

Adding the vinegar yeast at 75°F. Yeast and the microbes in it are sensitive to heat. Adding them only after the juice has cooled to 75°F keeps them alive, while boiling liquid would kill them before fermentation can begin.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, vinegar):

  1. Currantfits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, 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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