Name: To Make Vinegar From Corn
Ingredients: 1 gallon shelled corn; 3 gallons water; 1 pint molasses

Why it works: Corn and molasses work together. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 644 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Make Vinegar From Corn

Ingredients

1 gallon shelled corn
3 gallons water
1 pint molasses

Directions

Prepare the corn

Soak the corn in just enough water to cover it.
Boil the corn in the remaining water until it begins to get tender.

Ferment

Transfer the corn to a jar.
Pour 4 gallons of boiling water over it.
Add the molasses.
Let it stand for about 2 weeks.
Strain the mixture into a keg; it will soon become vinegar.

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.

Corn + molassestop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together644 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

Shelled corn: Provides starch that is converted into sugars for fermentation into vinegar.
Molasses: Adds sugar that feeds the yeast and bacteria driving fermentation 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.