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Corn Vinegar

A fermented vinegar made by boiling corn, adding syrup, water, and a mother culture, then allowing it to ferment for about four weeks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and syrup are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,678 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Corn Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Boil 1 pint of corn in 4 quarts of rainwater until the grains burst.

  2. Transfer the corn and water to a crock.

  3. Add 1 pint of syrup and enough water to make a total of 1 gallon.

  4. Add some of the 'mother' to the mixture.

Ferment

  1. Cover the crock with double mosquito netting and keep it warm for about 4 weeks.

  2. Do not cork the jug; instead, tie a cloth over it.

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. Corn + syruptop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,678 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

Corn
Provides the starch and sugars that feed the fermentation into acetic acid.
Syrup
Adds extra sugar so the fermenting yeast and bacteria have more food to convert.
Mother
Supplies live acetic acid bacteria that start the vinegar fermentation.

The step that matters

Keeping the crock warm and loosely covered. Acetic acid bacteria work best at warm temperatures and need air to convert alcohol into acetic acid. A sealed container can stall them or let unwanted microbes grow, so the cover must allow airflow while keeping out dust and insects.

“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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