Vinegar, Made with a Vinegar Plant
Ingredients
Directions
Make the liquor
Boil the sugar and treacle in water.
Stir well and pour into a large jar.
Ferment
When lukewarm, add a vinegar plant.
Let it stand in a warm place for two months or more until it turns to vinegar.
Finish and store
Boil the vinegar, strain it, and bottle for use.
Store in a cool place.
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
- Coarse brown sugar
- Provides the sugars that the vinegar plant ferments into acetic acid.
- Treacle
- Adds sugars and flavour that carry through into the finished vinegar.
- Vinegar plant (in the method)
- Supplies the acetic acid bacteria that convert the sweet liquid into vinegar.
The step that matters
Adding the vinegar plant while lukewarm. If the liquid is too hot, the live culture in the vinegar plant can be killed before it starts working. Cooling it to lukewarm lets the bacteria survive and begin converting the sugars to acetic acid.
“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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