Name: Molasses Settlings
Ingredients: ½ to ¾ barrel of soft water; 1 to 2 gallons of vinegar; molasses settlings or rinsings

Why it works: Vinegar and molasses are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,253 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Molasses Settlings

Ingredients

½ to ¾ barrel of soft water
1 to 2 gallons of vinegar
molasses settlings or rinsings

Directions

Fill a vinegar barrel half or three-quarters full with soft water.
Add the molasses settlings or the mother from an empty vinegar barrel, or 1 to 2 gallons of vinegar.
Stir the mixture well.
Place the barrel in a warm location to ferment into cider vinegar.

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.

Vinegar + molassestop 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

Molasses settlings: Supply sugars and microorganisms that ferment the liquid into vinegar.
Vinegar: Provides acetic acid and existing vinegar culture to start the fermentation.
Soft water: Forms the liquid base in which the sugars ferment.

“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.