Name: Malt Vinegar
Ingredients: 1 boll (about 120 lbs) of good barley malt; water; 3-4 gallons of beer yeast

Why it works: Barley and malt work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 32 recipes. Both carry decadienal, which smells fried, fat. The science ↓

Malt Vinegar

Ingredients

1 boll (about 120 lbs) of good barley malt
water
3-4 gallons of beer yeast

Directions

Make the wort

Crush the barley malt and mash it with water at 160°F (70°C).
Add hotter water for the second mash and boiling water for the third mash.
Extract no more than 100 gallons of wort.
Cool the wort to 75°F (24°C) and mix in the beer yeast.

Ferment

After 36-40 hours, rack off the liquid into casks laid on their sides.
Maintain a temperature of at least 70°F (21°C) in the fermenting area.
Leave bung-holes open and do not fill casks completely to allow air circulation.

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.

Barley + malttop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together32 recipes

Shared aroma: decadienal (fried, fat).
Malt + beertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together55 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Barley + beertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28 recipes

Shared aroma: 5-ethyl-3-hydroxy-4-methyl-2(5h)-furanone (spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Barley malt: Provides the starches converted to sugars that the yeast ferments into alcohol.
Beer yeast: Ferments the sugars in the wort into alcohol, which bacteria later turn into acetic acid.
Water: Carries out the mashing and extraction of sugars from the malt.

The step that matters

Keep the fermenting area at or above 70°F (21°C). Yeast ferments slowly or stalls when cool, and the wort may not convert fully to alcohol. Open bung-holes and partly filled casks let air circulate, which the acetic acid bacteria need to turn the alcohol into vinegar.

“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.