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Drink

Apple Vinegar

A homemade vinegar made by fermenting apple parings, cores, water, molasses, and tea.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and tea work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 150 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Apple Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Save all apple parings and cores when cooking.

  2. Place them in a jar and cover with cold water.

  3. Add 1 pint of molasses for every 3 to 4 gallons of water.

  4. Cover the jar with mosquito netting.

Feed the jar

  1. Continue to add more apple parings and any leftover cold tea.

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. Apple + teatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together150 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Apple + molassestop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together970 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + teatop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together139 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

Apple parings and cores
Provide the fruit sugars and natural yeasts that ferment into vinegar.
Molasses
Supplies sugar to feed the fermentation that turns the liquid acidic.
Cold tea
Adds additional liquid and nutrients to keep the fermenting culture going.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, tea):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, tea. 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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