Why it works: White currant and sugar work together. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 59 recipes. The science ↓
Currant Vinegar
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare and ferment
String the currants and place them in a vessel.
Add 1 gallon of water.
Let the currants ferment in a warm kitchen for several days, stirring to prevent mold.
Strain and age
Strain the liquid from the fruit, bruising or squeezing the fruit while straining.
Add 2 pounds of coarse sugar to the strained liquid.
Transfer the mixture to a cask or suitable vessel and let it sit in a warm room.
After about six weeks, you will have strong, fine-colored vinegar.
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.
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White currant + sugartop 29% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together59 recipes
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Currants
- Provide the acidic juice and natural sugars that ferment into vinegar, along with the color.
- Water
- Dilutes the fruit juice so fermentation proceeds at a workable strength and volume.
- Coarse sugar
- Feeds the fermentation, adding sweetness that the yeast and bacteria convert into acetic acid.
The step that matters
Stirring during fermentation. Stirring keeps the surface exposed to air and prevents mold from taking hold on the fruit and liquid during the multi-day warm fermentation, which would spoil the batch.
“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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