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Clover Bloom Vinegar

A fermented vinegar made from clover bloom, brown sugar, molasses, boiling water, and hop yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and molasses are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Clover Bloom Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Combine 6 pounds of brown sugar with 1 bushel of clover bloom.

  2. Add 4 quarts of molasses and 9 gallons of boiling water.

Ferment

  1. Let the mixture cool, then add 3 pints of hop yeast.

  2. Cover the tub with a folded sheet and let it stand for 14 days.

Finish

  1. Strain the mixture and store it away.

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. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 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

Brown sugar
Provides the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol, which then becomes acetic acid.
Molasses
Adds additional fermentable sugars and a deep, rich flavor to the vinegar.
Hop yeast
Starts the fermentation that converts the sugars into alcohol and then vinegar.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the hop yeast. Boiling water would kill the yeast. The liquid must be cool enough that the yeast stays alive and can start fermenting the sugars.

“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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