Name: Home-made Table Vinegar
Ingredients: four gallons of warm rain-water; one gallon of common molasses; two quarts of yeast

Why it works: Molasses and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,429 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Home-made Table Vinegar

Ingredients

four gallons of warm rain-water
one gallon of common molasses
two quarts of yeast

Directions

Prepare

Put in an open cask four gallons of warm rain-water, one gallon of common molasses and two quarts of yeast.
Cover the top with thin muslin.

Ferment

Leave it in the sun, covering it up at night and when it rains.
Wait three or four weeks for the vinegar to develop.
If using cider instead of rain water, wait less than a week for a sharp vinegar.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

513Calories

13 gProtein

1 gFat

110 gCarbs

What these numbers assume: 2 portions

Ingredient	Portion assumed	kcal
Flour	1 cup (125g) all-purpose	455
Molasses	1 tbsp (20g)	58

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By F. L. Gillette and Hugo Ziemann. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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.

Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,429 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: Provides sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol, which bacteria then turn into acetic acid.
Yeast: Starts the fermentation that converts sugars into alcohol for the vinegar to form from.
Warm rain-water: Dissolves the molasses and yeast and gives the mixture a liquid base for fermentation.

“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.