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Cider Vinegar

A fermented vinegar made from rye meal, hard cider, whiskey, and other ingredients.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and sugar work together. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 535 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Cider Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Start the vinegar

  1. Mix 6 quarts of rye meal into a barrel of strong hard cider.

  2. Add 1 gallon of whiskey and cover the cask loosely.

  3. Place the cask in a sunny, airy spot for 4 weeks.

Draw off and replenish

  1. When drawing off vinegar, replenish with the same amount of cider and add 1 pint of whiskey.

Variations

  1. For a stronger vinegar, mix cider with 1 pound of strained honey per gallon and let it stand for 5-6 months.

  2. For white vinegar, mix 5 gallons of water, 2 gallons of whiskey, and 1 quart of strong yeast, stirring in 2 pounds of powdered charcoal.

  3. Leave the bung loose during fermentation for 4 months, then draw off the 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.

  1. Rye + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together535 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  2. Rye + cidertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Cider + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,308 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

Cider
Supplies the sugars and alcohol that acetic acid bacteria convert into vinegar.
Whiskey
Adds alcohol that feeds the fermentation into acetic acid.
Rye meal
Provides starches and nutrients that support the fermentation.
Strong yeast
Starts alcoholic fermentation in the white vinegar mixture.

The step that matters

Leave the cask loosely covered in a sunny, airy spot. Vinegar forms through acetic acid bacteria, which need oxygen to turn alcohol into acetic acid. A tightly sealed cask blocks air and stalls the process, while a loose cover lets air in.

“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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