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Drink

Blackcurrant Vinegar

A vinegar made by fermenting black currants with vinegar, water, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Blackcurrant Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Place the black currants in a jar and crush them by hand.

  2. Cover the currants with vinegar and let them sit for 48 hours.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve until all the juice has been extracted.

Cook the fruit

  1. Put the fruit in a pan.

  2. Nearly cover the fruit with cold water.

  3. Bring to a boil.

  4. Remove from heat and press the mixture through the sieve.

  5. Combine this juice with the first juice.

Sweeten and bottle

  1. Measure the combined juice.

  2. Add ½ pound of brown sugar for each pint.

  3. Return the mixture to the pan.

  4. Boil for 5 minutes.

  5. Strain through a piece of muslin.

  6. Bottle when cool.

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. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  2. Black currant + vinegartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Black currants
Provide the main fruit flavour, colour and juice for the vinegar.
Vinegar
Extracts the fruit's juice and supplies the sharp acidity that defines the drink.
Brown sugar
Balances the acidity with sweetness and adds a deeper, caramel-like flavour.

The step that matters

Boil for 5 minutes after adding the sugar. Sugar must fully dissolve and the mixture must be boiled briefly so the syrup is evenly sweetened and stable. Undercooking can leave it cloudy or prone to spoiling, while long boiling dulls the fresh fruit flavour.

Swap the black currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Black currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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