Skip to main content
Drink

Rhubarb Vinegar

A fermented vinegar made from rhubarb, water, sugar, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rhubarb and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,852 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Rhubarb Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the infusion

  1. Bruise the rhubarb stalks and pour them into 5 gallons of water.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 24 hours, then strain it.

Ferment

  1. Add 9 pounds of brown sugar and 1 small cup of yeast to the strained liquid.

  2. Keep the mixture warm for one month.

  3. After a month, strain it again and store in a cask until it is sour enough to use.

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. Rhubarb + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,852 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

Rhubarb
Supplies the tart flavor and acidity that give the vinegar its character.
Brown sugar
Provides the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol, which then turns sour.
Yeast
Starts the fermentation that converts sugar into alcohol for the vinegar to develop from.

The step that matters

Keeping the mixture warm for a month. Fermentation proceeds slowly and depends on steady warmth; if the mixture gets too cold, the yeast works poorly and the sugar may not fully convert. Store the cask until the vinegar is sour enough to use.

“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.

You might also like

Rhubarb WineRhubarb Wine51 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipes