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Blackberry Vinegar

A blackberry vinegar made by fermenting blackberries with cider vinegar, sugar, and nutmeg, served over water with ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cider and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,431 recipes. Both carry 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Blackberry Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the vinegar

  1. Pour the cider vinegar over the blackberries and let them stand for 24 hours.

  2. Strain the mixture to extract the juice.

  3. For each pint of juice, add ¾ pound of sugar and boil for 30 minutes, skimming carefully.

  4. Once cooled, bottle the vinegar and cork lightly.

Serve

  1. To serve, pour 1 inch of blackberry vinegar in a glass, fill with water and pounded ice, and season with nutmeg.

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. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  2. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

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

  4. Cider + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together884 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Vinegar + nutmegtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,864 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Blackberries
Provide the fruit flavour and colour that the vinegar takes on.
Cider vinegar
Extracts flavour from the berries and gives the drink its tartness.
Sugar
Balances the acidity and adds sweetness to the reduced juice.

The step that matters

Skimming during the 30-minute boil. Skimming removes foam and impurities that rise as the sugared juice boils, leaving a clearer, cleaner-tasting syrup. Skimming late or not at all can leave the vinegar cloudy and less refined.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cider, vinegar, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Peppermintfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, vinegar, sugar. 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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