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Drink

To Make Vinegar

A homemade vinegar made by mixing acetic acid, molasses, and rain water, then allowing it to ferment.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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To Make Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a 40-gallon cask, combine 4 pounds of acetic acid and 1 gallon of molasses.

  2. Fill the cask with rain water and shake it well.

  3. Let the mixture stand for 1 to 3 weeks.

  4. If the vinegar is not sharp enough, add more molasses.

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

What each ingredient does

Acetic acid
Supplies the sharp, sour acidity that the finished vinegar starts with.
Molasses
Provides sugar that fermenting microbes convert into more acid over the standing period.

“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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