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Mulberry Vinegar

A fermented vinegar made by soaking mulberries in vinegar, bruising, and boiling with 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 ↓

Mulberry Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Macerate the mulberries

  1. Place 6 pounds of ripe mulberries in an earthenware pan and cover with vinegar.

  2. Let them soak for 24 hours.

  3. Bruise the mulberries with a wooden spoon and cover with a cloth for another 24 hours.

  4. Bruise and mix well, adding more vinegar until nearly 1 gallon has been used.

  5. Let the mixture stand for a week, stirring daily.

Sweeten and boil

  1. Strain off the vinegar and add 1 pound of loaf sugar for every pint of vinegar.

  2. Boil and skim the mixture for 5 minutes.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe mulberries
Provide the main fruit flavour and colour that the vinegar draws out during soaking.
Vinegar
Extracts the mulberry flavour and acts as the preserving base of the syrup.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the vinegar and helps preserve the finished liquid.

The step that matters

Boil and skim for 5 minutes. Boiling the sugar and vinegar together dissolves the sugar fully and drives off harsh sharpness, while skimming removes foam and fruit debris that would cloud the liquid or spoil it.

“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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