Name: To Make Cider Vinegar
Ingredients: 10 gallons apple juice; 8 gallons cider; 8 gallons fresh cider

Why it works: Apple and cider are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,238 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

To Make Cider Vinegar

Ingredients

10 gallons apple juice
8 gallons cider
8 gallons fresh cider

Directions

Ferment

Let the apple juice ferment.
Add 8 gallons of cider for a second fermentation.
Let it ferment for about two weeks.

Refresh

Add 8 gallons of fresh cider.

Seal and store

Stop the bung-hole with a bottle, leaving the neck downward.
Draw off half into a cask.
Set it in a cool 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.

Apple + cidertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,238 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Apple juice: Supplies the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol, the base for the vinegar.
Cider: Adds more fermentable sugar and flavour for the second fermentation.
Fresh cider: Adds fresh sugar and fuel to keep the fermentation going.

“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.