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How to Make Vinegar

A method for producing vinegar by fermenting a sugar solution with yeast and a bread starter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Brandy and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,427 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

How to Make Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liquid

  1. Boil 4 quarts of rainwater with 1 pound of coarse brown sugar or 1 pint of molasses. Skim the mixture.

  2. Pour the mixture into a tub and add 1 quart of rainwater for each gallon of the mixture.

Ferment

  1. Toast a slice of well-raised bread until brown and cover it with yeast.

  2. Place the bread in the tub, cover it with a cloth, and let it sit for 4 to 5 days to ferment.

  3. After fermentation, pour the liquid into a good cask.

  4. Roll up a sheet of white paper and place it in the cask as a starter (mother).

Age and finish

  1. Let it stand for 4 to 6 months.

  2. If not sour enough, add 1 gallon of whiskey.

  3. To preserve vinegar, add any slops of tea, brandy, wine, lemonade, and scum of preserves.

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.

  1. Brandy + winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Tea + winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together181 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Bread + teatop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together383 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Bread + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together976 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Tea + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together121 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Rain water
Forms the liquid base that the sugar or molasses is dissolved and fermented in.
Brown sugar or molasses
Supplies the sugars that yeast converts into alcohol, which bacteria then turn into acetic acid.
Yeast
Starts the fermentation by converting sugars into alcohol.
Bread
Carries yeast onto the liquid to begin fermentation.
Whiskey
Adds more alcohol for the vinegar bacteria to convert, increasing sourness.

The step that matters

Covering the tub and letting it ferment undisturbed. Fermentation needs a warm, airy but protected environment; a cloth keeps dust and unwanted microbes out while still allowing air in. Yeast first turns sugar into alcohol, and only later do acetic acid bacteria turn that 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.

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